Basic Music Theory 4: Do As The Romans Do

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 chord types). Only when referring to the chords in a particular key, the assumption is that you already know what the chord type will be. This numbering system is usually written down using Roman numerals. Lets look at the key of G for this example:

Now lets assign numbers to each of the notes using Roman numerals:

I always means major chord

II always means minor chord

III always means minor chord

IV always means major chord

V always means major chord

VI always means minor chord

VII always means diminished

So the chords in the key of G would be:

So when a bandmate says: “One, four, five in the key of G”. You know that he/she is telling you to play Gmaj, Cmaj and Dmaj. As of course the I, IV and V would mean different chords in other keys, it works as a great way to communicate chord progressions in a live situation.

Like the method used for finding notes of a major scale using the T-T-S-T-T-T-S system we can apply this same type of logic for finding the chords types within any key. When the notes of a major scale are written out in sequence order starting from the root note (in the key of C, the root is C), The chord types always follow the order:

This is you popular music palette of chords to write chord progressions (we'll talk more about that later). This is the language of musicians and a very useful concepts to learn.

Hope you have found this useful, let me know in the comments :)

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Taken from my book series 'Six String Enigma'

Recommended Reading:

The AB Guide to Music Theory Vol 1

Music Theory For Dummies

Chords And Scales For Guitarists

Ultimate Scale Book Pocket Guide Guitar Tab Book

Guitar Fretboard Fluency: The Creative Guide to Mastering The Guitar

Chord Chemistry by Ted Greene

#basic #music #theory #roman #numerals #chordprogressions #sixstringenigma

Basic Music Theory 3: Chords

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 used/essential chord types are Major and Minor. Often suspended, diminished and augmented chords are used as a way to maximise the impact of major and minor through creative use of dissonance and consonance (more on this later).

SO HOW DO WE FORM CHORDS?

There is a very simple method of forming chords from the major scale. Lets look at C major for this example:

C D E F G A B C

To find chords in the key of C we just have to play every other note until we have three notes to form a triad:

C E G= C major chord

Now lets start from the note D and build a chord from this note:

D F A=D minor chord

You can continue this method to find out all the notes to all the chords that are present within the key of C.

Wait a minute...why is it a major chord when starting from C but a minor chord starting from D?

That’s a good question. Well apart from the sound the notes make when played together - C E G sounds ‘happy’, D F A sounds ‘sad’, the name of the chord is created by using the individual notes own major scale.

The names ‘major’ and ‘minor’ relate to the intervals between the notes. For example with a C major chord the interval between C and E is a major third apart, with a C minor chord (C Eb G) the interval between C and Eb is aminor third.

Major means a larger gap.

Minor means a smaller gap.

Major third? Minor third? I’m still confused... Let’s look at the C major scale once more, only this time lets assign numbers to each note:

So as we already know, to form a C major chord we need the notes C E G. If we look at the numbers of those notes in relation to the numbers assigned with the scale we have:

1 3 5

Now lets look at the D major scale and assign numbers to it:

We can see the notes to a D major chord are:

D F# A

The numbers of these notes are also:

1 3 5

Now lets look at that D minor chord that confused us in the key of C:

D F A

So obviously it is not a D major chord because it has an F instead of an F#. The 3 has now been flattened (b3). This is known as a minor 3rd. It is now:

1 b3 5

The 3rd is the the tonal quality that gives the chord its distinct major or minor sound. To turn a major chord into a minor all we have to do is move the third down a semi-tone (flatten the note), to turn a minor chord into a major chord we raise a b3 by a semitone (one fret).

This numbering system ALWAYS relates to the notes own major scale. We will go over it again a little bit later, but now you have been introduced this numeric way of thinking in terms of building chords, its time to really dig our heels into this concept. Take a look at the table below:

Remember these numbers relate to the key of a individual note. To reiterate if we want to work out for example the notes for a Cdim (diminished) chord. We look at the notes of the C major scale:

We then assign numbers to the notes, then look at the numeric spelling of a diminished chord and flatten notes accordingly:

1 3 5 C E G = Cmaj

becomes...

1 b3 b5 C Eb Gb = Cdim

If we want to work out the notes of an Edim (diminished) chord. We look at the notes of the E major scale:

Assign numbers to the notes, look the the numeric spelling of a diminished chord (1 b3 b5) and flatten accordingly:

1 3 5 E G# B = Emaj

becomes...

1 b3 b5 E G Bb = Edim

Now we have an understanding of how chords receive their names lets continue with harmonising all the notes in the key of C:

Thats how you know which chords to play in a given key. The example here is C Major, therefore the most prominent chord would be C. This is home base. Most popular music is written from the seven chords we get when we harmonise the notes of a major scale.

For example the most popular easily recogniseable chord progression is:

I IV V

In the case of C Major this would be:

Cmaj Fmaj Gmaj

You would then create melodies using the notes from the C major scale. Instant song.

Try working out the chords in other keys to really get a grasp on this concept.

Hope you've found this helpful, let me know in the comments.

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Taken from my book series 'Six String Enigma'

Recommended Reading:

The AB Guide to Music Theory Vol 1

Music Theory For Dummies

Chords And Scales For Guitarists

Ultimate Scale Book Pocket Guide Guitar Tab Book

Guitar Fretboard Fluency: The Creative Guide to Mastering The Guitar

Chord Chemistry by Ted Greene

#basic #music #theory #chords

Basic Music Theory 2: Major Scale

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 of a major scale/key all we need to do is follow this simple formula for the intervallic sequence:

tone - tone - semitone - tone - tone - tone - semitone

To make it simpler to read lets abbreviate it:

T-T-S-T-T-T-S

This method works for all keys but for this example, lets work out the notes for the key of Aor A major:

A Major= A B C# D E F# G#A

Lets translate this on the fretboard:

If you have understood the concept and had a go working out some scales for yourself.

I recommend getting a pencil and some paper to work out other scales.

Write down the 12 notes, then use the T-T-S-T-T-T-S formula starting from the note of your choice. Check the table below to see if you got them right:

You may be asking yourself “How do you know whether to name a note sharp (#) or flat (b)?”. The answer to this is simple. If we take the key of F as an example, it makes logical sense to call the note Bb instead of A# because we already have an A note within the scale:

F G A BbC D E F

Much easier to read and understand than:

F G A A# C D E F

Hope that makes sense to you. Let me know how useful you have found this in the comments section and feel free to ask questions.

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Recommended Reading:

The AB Guide to Music Theory Vol 1

Music Theory For Dummies

Chords And Scales For Guitarists

Ultimate Scale Book Pocket Guide Guitar Tab Book

Guitar Fretboard Fluency: The Creative Guide to Mastering The Guitar

Chord Chemistry by Ted Greene

#basic #music #theory #major #scale #sixstringenigma