How Guitars Work

When we’re working out a song, it’s important that we know what key it's in. If you’ve shied away from keys and scales in the past, because you think it means spending hours learning complex theory, don’t worry, I’m going to break this down for you and show you specifically, how to apply this to the guitar. You will learn That there are seven individual notes in any key That you can use these notes to understand which chords to play in a key Chords 1, 4 and 5 in a major key will always be major Chords 2, 3 and 6 in a major key will always be minor Chords 7 in a major key will always be diminished What is a musical key? A key is a family of notes that sound good together. We already know that there are 12 notes in the musical alphabet. You can start on any note (A-G) and work up all 12 notes until you return to the start (this is known as a chromatic scale). When you play in a certain musical key, you identify which 7 of the 12 available notes in the musical alphabet you are goin

In this lesson I’m going to show you how to take a simple three note bassline and, using harmonies, turn it into something that's interesting and beautiful to play or listen to. We’re going to split this session into two parts.  In part a you’re going to learn: The difference between notes, harmonies and chords How chords are built In part b, you’ll use this knowledge to find and play harmony notes. You’re going to need to refer to the PDF sheet you filled in as part of your homework in lesson 3 , so if you haven’t got that to hand, go grab it now. Part a The difference between notes, harmonies, and chords If you play an additional note at the same time as your melody notes, you're playing a harmony. So a harmony is made up of two notes that sound good when played together. If you play an additional two notes at the same time as the melody notes, you're playing a chord: One sound is a note Two notes at the same time is a harmony Three notes or more at the same time is a ch

In this lesson, we’ll be looking at musical intervals - or the spaces between notes, and why they’re so important for guitar players to understand. You will learn: What an interval is The name of the 12 interval positions That you can play the same melody in different places, as long as the intervals between notes are the same How the guitar is tuned, helps you to learn where to find your interval notes What the place markers on the fifth fret and seventh fret of your guitar are for Interval names In music theory, each of these twelve positions in the musical alphabet has a special name assigned to it.  That name references how far away it is from the first note played in a particular scale. The correct musical term for this distance between notes is an interval.  I’m going to show you the names of these 12 intervals now because as we move through the lessons you’ll learn: the relationship they have with each other how to move between intervals quickly, without having to memorise the f

In this lesson we’re going to be looking at the musical alphabet. The alphabet is one of the first things you do when you learn any new language, and the same is true for the language of music.  Before we learn anything new, I think it’s really important to understand why we’re learning it. So let me tell you why the musical alphabet deserves its own lesson. Why the musical alphabet is important Any song you’ve ever heard, or learned to play, was written using the musical alphabet. It’s the building block for musical scales and keys. Understanding it, and its rules, will help you to work out melodies by ear as we move through this course. During this lesson, I’m going to be referring to the piano because it will really help you to visualize the theory. But, don’t worry, you don’t need any prior knowledge of the piano at all in order to be able to follow along.  You’re not going to be playing your guitar for the first couple of lessons because they're about understanding the rules o