![]() ![]() The major scale that most of us are familiar with uses 7 notes: C, D, E, F, G, A, B. More on this below, as we move on to the chromatic scale. In either case, you wind up with the same note. The two different ways of notating it are basically saying “move up a semitone from C” or “move down a semitone from D”. For example, the two notes shown above (C# and Db) are the same pitch-the note that you hear is exactly the same. One important thing to understand about sharps and flats is that the same note that you hear (the same pitch) can be notated in different ways. But all we have to worry about for the guitar is the treble clef, which I explain here. Other instruments use other clefs, like bass clef or alto clef, in which case the lines and spaces on the staff indicate different notes. The clef tells you what notes are indicated by the lines and spaces on the musical staff. Notes are placed on the five-lined musical staff and, together with the clef, let the musician know what notes to play.Īll of the notation in this lesson assumes we’re using the treble clef, which is the clef used for guitar. A musical note is a symbol that indicates what pitch to play and how long to play it. Some of this may be obvious, but let’s start at the very beginning to make sure nothing gets missed. For more details about musical notation, check out the Musical Symbols lesson. I’m just going to explain the parts that are relevant to guitar players who are new to music theory. Keep in mind that that I’m not going to into thorough, exhaustive detail about each concept because then the lesson would be really long and would read like an encyclopedia article. You’ll learn the following concepts in this lesson: Think of it as learning a foreign language: before you learn simple sentences, you should first learn some of the most common vocabulary words. But it’s important to know some key concepts to answer the larger musical questions that beginners often have. Common questions are “What should I learn first?”, “How do I know what scale to play?”, and “How can I identify chords?”Īll of these questions are easy to answer but they require a little bit of basic musical knowledge first. See also this answer to a related question.Many guitarists want to be able to go beyond just strumming chords and want to understand the music theory behind what they’re playing. Yet another source of chords from outside the major scale are secondary dominants (and their related II chords), resolving to diatonic chords:Ī7 => Dm | => Em | => F | D7 => G | E7 => Am These other chord tones can also be borrowed from the parallel minor key, and the most frequently used chords are (again in C): If you combine the chords from the parallel (natural) minor scale and from phrygian, you get these additional triads in the key of C:ĭb major | Eb major | Ab major | Bb majorĪpart from these chords with root notes which are not part of the C major scale, you can also use chords with roots from the scale, but with other chord tones outside the scale. A chord with the b2 as a root can be borrowed from phrygian. The parallel minor key will give you chords with roots on all chromatic notes except for the b2 (the Db in the key of C) and the #4/b5 (F#/Gb). The concept of using chords from a parallel tonality is called modal interchange. ![]() ![]() In a major key, it is quite common to add chords from the parallel minor key. Because otherwise the obvious answer is that if you allow any note, any chord could be added. For me the only way to make sense of your question is to interpret it as "which chords outside the key are frequently added to a piece in major?". ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |