Month: November 2009

Posted in From the major scale to (hopefully) understanding how things work.

Chord scale exercise

by on

Printable PDF: Chord-Scale Ex.

This is an introduction to how to use the right scale for the chord of the moment. I will not be talking about modes yet as I find this creates a bit of confusion at this stage. We have seen how on every degree (=note) of the scale we can build a triad of some kind and add a 7th to it. These are three examples so you can have the most popular ‘chord shapes’ to play with and on 3 different string sets.

The first is an example in G major: the roots of the chords are all on the 6th string.

To find the correct scale for the chords just play a G major scale starting from the degree the chord sits on (like I do in the video).

G maj7 = G major from G to G (1st degree)

Am7     =  G major from A to A (2nd degree)

Bm7     = G major from B to B (3rd degree)

And so on…I am sure you get the idea.

The next is an example in C major: the roots of the chords are all on the 5th string. Watch the video and find the related scales

And again this is an example in F major: the roots of the chords are all on the 4th string. You know what to do…

Posted in From the major scale to (hopefully) understanding how things work.

Simple song analyzed

by on

In this video I show some examples of very simple chord progressions that originate from the Harmonized Major Scale.

When I say ‘one, four, five’ I mean the song is built by the 1st, the 4th and 5th chord of the harmonized scale. So such song would be C major, F major, and G major and if I wanted to write its structure I’d write it with roman numerals: I IV V. as an example you can think of songs like ‘Twist and shout’, ‘La Bamba’ or similar…again this is just the very basic stuff!

Other common structures are II V I (‘two, five, one’ = Dm G C in C major), I VI IV V and so on…

As I said this is just the beginning, I’ll show you how to understand more complicated songs. Also, will post in the near future  a list of analyzed chords progressions patterns for you to use in your songs.

Posted in From the major scale to (hopefully) understanding how things work.

From the major scale to the harmonized scale (Pt.2 7th chords)

by on

How to add the 7th to triads from the major harmonized scale?

We have already seen how to find the triads that belong to the major harmonized scale.

..adding the 7th is very simple. If we stack another note a diatonic third apart from the last note we have found, we will have Seventh chords. As a matter of fact, the notes we have used to build the triad where the 1st, 3rd and 5th note of the major scale…the one we are adding is the 7th note of the scale. In C major it will give us the following 7th chords.

Cmaj7 Dm7  Em7    Fmaj7       G7      Am7   Bm7(b5)

Here you will find the most common 7th chords guitar shapes, just print out the file.

Printable file: Common 7th chords

Posted in From the major scale to (hopefully) understanding how things work.

Understanding how triads and other chords are built

by on

How to analyze triads and more advanced chords?


The starting point is the major triad, in the example in C major, but this concept is valid for all keys, as usual.

The C major chord is built with these three notes:

C  E  G

As we said this triad is built with the Root (C) the 3rd (E) and the 5th (G) of the major scale. Also, if we calculate the intervals between the Root and the other two notes we notice that there is an interval of a major 3rd between C and E and of a perfect 5th between C and G.

So if I wanted to write a formula for the major triad I would write

C   E  G

1   3   5 (Root-Major third-Perfect fifth)

If now we want to find the chord C minor all we have to do is lower the 3rd of the chord (E is lowered to Eb)

So now the triad for C minor is

C  Eb  G

1  b3  5 (Notice how the formula changes Root –Minor Thirds – Perfect fifth)

From this I can tell that the difference between a major and minor chord is in the 3rd.

—

The diminished and augmented triads can be told from the 5th.

If C major is C E G

C augmented is    C  E   G# (I have raised the 5th of a halfstep)

Formula             1   3   #5

C diminished is     C  Eb Gb (a minor triad with the flattened 5th)

Formula             1   b3  b5

Posted in From the major scale to (hopefully) understanding how things work.

From the major scale to the harmonized scale (Pt.1 triads)

by on

In this video I’ll show you how to build the harmonized scale, which is vital to find out what chord belong to a specific key. In the example I am building the Harmonized scale in the key of C major. In one of the successive videos of this series you’ll see that you can use these chords to build a very simple songs in a single key.
The process is fairy simple: I stack on top of every note of the scale two consecutive diatonic 3rds. Let’s say, for example if I start from C, the two notes will be E and G. If I start from D the notes will be F and A…is this easy enough?

In the example below every note of a major scale identifies a ‘grade’ of the scale. In the example I have used C major, but this is valid for every other major scale.

If I stack on every grade two more notes a third apart (basically every other one) I end up with different kinds of triads (triad=group of three notes). These triads are shown in the example below. If we analyze the intervals between notes:

On the guitar, like in the video:

You will have the same series of chords in all the other keys Eg: F major: F, Gm, Am, Bb, C, Dm, Em.

This again is valid for all the 12 keys. This concept is vital to understand how songs are built and how to pick the correct scale for a solo.