5. Simple musical chord and scale theory, C7, B7 (H7), D7, G7,
You willl learn
- The chords C7, B7 (H7) och D7
- Simple chord and scale theory to understand the basic structure of chords.
- Some important musical terminology.
- If you absolutely do not want to learn about musical theory now - move on to the next lesson. You should, however, return to this lessopn at a later time if you truly want to understand the music you're playing. Also it will help you when you want to write your own songs.
- Note: this is a BIG lesson. Learn it piece by piece, and don't stress out if not everything is clear from the start - you can always read it again=).
Tune the guitar!
First you have to tune your guitar, otherwise it will sound horrible. =)Tune with a computerized guitar, Click here
New chords
From now on I'm not going to make a video for every chord demonstration - I think the diagrams are enough.
Some of you might have noticed (and become frustrated) over some songs which have the chord "B" or "H" in them. They are exactly the same thing - the H simply stems from a spelling mistake made by some monk in the 16th century. In English musical literature, B is not almost universal, but if you are looking at non-English notation H may still be used.
B makes much more sense though, since then we will have the real alphabet as we say the natural notes (you will learn all about this below) A B C D E F G (and not A H C D E F G).
Again, you will read about flats and sharps below, but you should be aware of that an H flat does not exist - in the old literature it's just written as B (to make it even more confusing). But you really will not come across this problem a lot, so don't worry about it if it seems messy. B is B and B flat is B flat =).
Musical Theory
Musical theory is usually percieved as boring... and this is actually true for the most part when you first start reading it. However, once you actually start to understand it, it gets more fun as you see how to apply it to your playing.
Many students (probably yourself included) ask themselves the question "Why do you only pluck some strings when playing a chord, and not the others?" 
That is exactly the question that musical theory answers, as well as many, many more. When you have read through this lesson you should be able to answer this question.
I only teach you this now because of two reasons:
1. I did not want to start out the course by making you bored with intervals, musical signs etc.
2. I wanted you to first get a feeling of how to hold and play the guitar, and som of the basic chords. Even the worlds greatest musical theorist's knowledge would be useless for guitar playing unless he/she can actually play the instrument.
Probably what you are about to read will sound a bit messy at first, however do not let it put you off - read through it again and again until it makes sense=). It will be of great help later, and the theoretical course builds upon this knowledge
True chords consist of at least three notes
A chord is defined as a set of notes that are played at the same time (i e playing more than one string at the same time yields at least two notes)
Theoretically speaking, The two most simple forms of true chords - simple minor or major chords - consist of only three different notes. These chords are called triad chords or chord triads (or simply just triad)
From the start I want you to be 100% aware of that all scales and all chords are structured and named in comparison to the C major scale and its chord in modern musical theory.
Before moving on I want to clarify some more important musical terminology
Scales, key, chromatic scale, diatonic scale, pitch, musical signs
By definition a musical scale is "A systematic arrangement of notes". In simpler terms, it is a collection of notes that are and stay the same unless you switch to another scale, which is called changing the key.
If I was to tell you that
The key of the song is in C, then it changed to D minor"
it would simply mean that first we are using chords related to the C major scale, then we switch to the D minor scale.
There are many types of scales with an array of different numbers of tones, but at the moment you only need to be concerned by two: the chromatic scale, and the diatonic scale.
The chromatic scale concists of all notes that can be found on the fretboard (12 in total), whereas a diatonic scale (also called heptatonic prima scale) consists of 8 chosen notes from the chromatic scale. Below you will find these concepts explained further.
Pitch is a term used to define a notes highness or lowness (i e if the sound is treble-like or bass-like). For instance by plucking the thick E string, you create the note E of a low pitch, and in plucking the thin string you create the note E with a higher pitch than the lower E.
Musical signs are used to either heighten the pitch of a note (thus making it sharp) or lower the pitch of a note (thus making it flat). There are two of them
the flat sign - ♭(usually I write it as a simple b)
the sharp sign - ♯(I simply write it using the numb er sign #)
Whenever you see any notes with these signs after them, it means that they have been "lowered" or "highered" by a half step (one semitone up or down). I will make it crystal clear in the next paragraphs, byt for now you should now that
1. Notes with ♯ after them are pronounced "note +sharp" i e A ♯= A sharp
2. Notes with ♭after them are pronounced "note + sharp" i e A♭ = A flat
Note: every note with a sign has a "twin note" with another sign - but they sound exactly the same! For example A# is the same as Bb!
Whole note, seminote/half note intervals (whole step, half step)
I will make this really simple:
To make a whole step
1. Put a finger on the 5th fret of the thick E string - the note A
2. Now move your finger up to the 7th fret of the E string - the note B
3. Notice that there is one fret in between the starting and finish points. Distance between the two is called a whole tone interval, and the "distance" you covered is called a whole tone step.
4. From a guitarist.s perspective: a whole note step means two frets' distancefrom the starting point
To make a half step
1. Put a finger on the 5th fret of the thick E string - the note A
2. Now move your finger up to the 7th fret of the E string - the note A#
3. The "distance" you covered this time is said to be one semitone step (same as half note step), with respect to the starting position. The interval is called a semitone.
4. From a guitarist's perspective: a semitone step means one fret's distance from the starting point.
The chromatic scale is composed of semitone intervals, the diatonic scale by a combination of whole and semitone intervals.
An interval is simply a description of the "space" between two notes (as you may have inferred), and is described below.
The chromatic scale
This is how the chromatic scale looks like. It has 12 notes and restarts in the 13th. For simplicity I started on the note A.
A |A♯/B♭| B| C |C♯/D♭| D |D♯/E♭| E |F |F♯/G♭| G| G♯/A♭| (A)
"Chromatic" comes from Greek - Kromos - and it means colour. It simply means that the scale contains all the colours of music (i e all the notes, including the semitones)
Note: there is no half step with a musical sign between the notes B & C and E & F
Another reason for why I startd with A is because you have the exact same notes on your A-string - look at this diagram.
this diagram is always available at Tools - Fretboard notes for quick reference.
The diatonic scale
The diatonic scale which all other scales and chords lie in comparison to is the C major scale.
It only consists of notes without signs (i e no flats and sharps) which are calles natural notes. This is because it is set as the "default" scale which allother scales are written and compared to. On a piano, all of the notes of the white keys are of the c major scale.
This is what it looks like, and as you can see it consists of 8 notes. The notes are, as I said, the notes without flats/sharps from the chromatic scale. The scale restarts on the 8th note, the octave - explained below.
C D E F G A B (C)
Intervals
An interval is a distance between two notes. Usually the notes of a scale are given interval names, and the actual interval, or distance, is the number of note steps (which may be half or whole note steps) in comparison to the root note of the scale.
The root note (or simply root) of a scale, is the note that defines the scale. For C major, the root ntoe is C.
For all intents and purposes, the intervals that you really need to be concerned with are those of the C major and all other major diatonic scales. The notes in the scale are given the names "1-7" as you go up the scale - if it's the major scale.
I know it sounds a bit tricky - but this is the simple picture that emerges:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (8)
C D E F G A B (C)
By this token - the numbers tell you that we are talking about a major scale (since there are no sharps or flats in front of the numbers), and the letters below the numbers tell you that we are specifically talking about the C major scale.
Every number has a name, which are quite simple to remember:
1 = Root, prime, first
2 = second
3 = third
4 = fourth
5 = fifth
6 = sixth
7 = seventh
8 = octave (same as the root note, but the pitch is twice as high)
9 = ninth
and so on...
Further down you will see how the numbers change for minor scale.
Triad chords (triads)
Simple major and minor chords are triads; they consist of three simultaneously played notes. These notes are specific selected intervals from the major or minor scales - the root/first (1) the third (3) and the fifth (5). The 3rd is actually flat in the minor chord, therefore it would be written like this:
1 b3 5. You will see why below
Now you are familiar with the most basic musical terms. The absolute crucial principles when it comes to chord theory are the following:
1. The root of a chord is ALWAYS the first letter in the name of the chord (+ any sign that follows it, telling you whether it is flat or sharp).
eg:The Em root note is E
2. The scale type (eg minor or diminished) that is used usually says immediately after the first letter. The intervals of this scale are those that you will use to construct the chord.
eg: Em uses the root, third and fifth of the E minor scale
3. If there is not sign for minor or anything else after the root note in the name, this automatically means that you use the intervals of the major scale of the root note and add intervals as indicated by the chord name.
For instance: C, means that you use the 1,3,5 triad from the C major scale.
4. Usually you should strive for having the root note as the one note with the lowest pitch in a chord (but it's not always the case).
Scale formulas (formulae), chord formulas
Major
Scale formulas are simply put the numbers that give the intervals of the major scale, and then these numbers are modified to give other diatonic scales. The numbers look the same for all major scales, but the notes change depending on what scale you're talking about. Thus this scale formula could represent the intervals of the C, D or even A# major scales
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (8)
The intervals of the major scale have either a half or a whole step between them. It's these differences that create the harmony of the major scale (happy-sounding). In order to illustrate this, one usually uses I to denote a whole step from the previous note, and i, which denotes a half step from the previous note always in the order of higher pitch (i e left to right).
I again put the C major scale below, and I want you to recall that in the chromatic scale there are no signed half-steps between BC and EF.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (8)
i I I i I I I (i)
C D E F G A B C
Now you can try to play the E major scale by simply following the steps - start from a loose E string, then whole step (F#/Gb), whole step (A#/Bb) half step (B) and so on. If you want to see if you did it correctly, check out the E-major scale here.
Minor
In the minor scale, the third, sixth and seventh are flat in relation to the major intervals. This will give ethe minor scale harmony (sad sounding). Therefore the scale formula for the regular minorscles (Cm Em Am etc) will look like this:
1 2 ♭3 4 5 ♭6 ♭7 (8)
Thus, if C major looks like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (8)
C D E F G A B (C)
... it means that C minor will look like this.
1 2 3♭ 4 5 6♭ 7♭ (8)
C D E♭ F G A♭ B♭ (C)
In chordformulas you simply write which intervals you will use, all compared to and changed with respect to the major scale, according to the chord name.
For the regular major and minor chords, they look like this:
Major
1 3 5
Minor
1 b3 5
If you are eager to look at more chord formulae, click here
Get familiar with some common chords and their structure
To illustrate all of the above I made three examples with common chords, explaining their structure. Click on a chord to learn its structure.
