In live band situations musicians will communicate chord progressions often referring to numbers. For example, you turn up to a jam night and the band decide to play a song you’ve never played before. The conversation could go like this: You: “What are the chords?” Bandmate: “One, Four, Five in the key of G” You: “Huh?” When you hear musicians say this, they are referring to the chords as numbers (much like the numbering system we have for finding the notes for different chor

Once we have established our key or major scale that we wish to use, the next step is to harmonise these notes to form chords. Chords are simply notes played together simultaneously. Basic chords are called Diads (two notes) & Triads (three notes) which are formed of two or more notes played together. There are essentially five basic types of chord tonalities or moods that we can get: Major (happy) Minor (sad) Suspended (hopeful) Diminished (dark) Augmented (ominous) The most

This is the ‘bread and butter’ of Western music. It consist of 7 notes derived from the 12 note chromatic scale. We can use the chromatic scale to find the notes of any major scale/ key using a very simple method. Lets look at the chromatic scale again: I. The distance between A and A#Bb is a semitone or half step (one fret). II. The distance between A and B is a tone or wholestep (twofrets). III. Once we get to G#/Ab the notes cycle back round to A again. To find the notes o

In Western music we have a total of 12 pitches/tones/notes at our disposal. The distance between each note when played in sequence is a semitone. We call this the Chromatic Scale: A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab The Chromatic Scale to a musician is the same as a paint palette to painter. Once we arrive at ‘G#/Ab’ we get back to ‘A’ again, only this time it’s an octave higher (the note pitch is perceived higher, we'll get on to this