New to all this however I've come to the conclusion that I'm the kinda guy that needs to know how things work before it makes any sense.
I mean I can follow tab but it feels far too much like monkey see, monkey do. I don't know why my fingers are supposed to go where the tab shows. I'm sure if I could grasp that it would help.
I mean if I've got this right for an open e chord I'm playing E B E G# B E (tried to figure that out on the fly so could be wrong) Even if it's right I have no clue why those are the notes and not any others.
Any suggestions on internet resources or books or even where to start with all this.
Thanks
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Also, I found The Practical Guide to Modern Music Theory for Guitarists by Joseph Alexander very helpful.
The single useful piece of information that nobody tells you is that a Key and a Scale are basically the same thing.
So if something is in the Key of Em that means it's using the Em scale and the notes within. It took me 18 months to work that out.
Take your open E Chord, from the E Major Scale which is E, F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, and D♯.
The root is the E, the 3rd is the G# and the 5th is the B. If you play those three notes you make a E Major Chord. Any major chord is made up of the 1 / 3 / 5 of its scale.
For a minor chord you sharpen the 3rd.
That's a start!
@Fuengi Ah, so that's why, for example, a 12 bar blues progression in E (I,IV,V) uses the E, A & B chords I guess. Thanks for handing me that piece of the puzzle.
Failing that, I would cover the following points, in order. I hope it is clear this is a ‘listening’ approach to music theory, not an ‘abstract’ approach.
1) Find the home note of a song. Try to sing or whistle the song’s “note of repose”, its root, the keystone where the song is grounded. It’s not always the last chord’s bassnote, and certainly not always the first chord’s bassnote, but it quite often is so that’s a good place to start.
2) Hear the difference between major vs minor. Be able to identify without fail whether music is in a major key or a minor key (or whether it’s ambiguous in the case of some rock and blues). It’s said major is “happier” than minor. Can you detect that?
3) Explore the concept of a ‘scale’ - both major and minor scales. Hear the interval between the root and each scale degree. Learn the names for each of the scale degrees. Tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, leading tone, octave. Look up why each has its name.
4) Familiarise yourself with what a 4th sounds like. And a 5th. And the octave. These are ‘perfect’ intervals. They are the same for major and minor scales.
5) Listen to the other intervals, especially the 3rd which has a major and minor version and determines whether the key is major or minor. Same with the 6th, and to a lesser extent the 7th. Also the 2nd, though this is the same for major and minor scale. Understand Tones (T) and semitones (s). Be able to hear the difference.
6) As well as the intervals between the root and each note in the scale, listen to the intervals between each note in the scale. Major is TTsTTTs. Minor is TsTTsTT.
7) Learn about and play the chords built from the tonic. The major and minor triads (1-3-5 chords), and the extensions major and minor 7 chords.
8) Discover “harmonising the major and minor scales”. Realise that for each of the scale degrees (eg subdominant), there is a chord (a 1-3-5-7 chord) built off that note. Hear each chord - hear whether it has a major or minor 3rd, whether it has a perfect 5th (or a diminished 5th); listen to the 7ths - are they major or minor 7ths? Contrast I-ii-iii-IV-V-vi-viidim-I (major scale) with i-iidim-III-iv-v-VI-VII-i (minor scale)
You now have all the vocabulary. Now start with harmonic analysis.
1) understand the main progressions. The V-I progression (“perfect cadence”). Listen to songs with I-IV-V-I progressions and ii-V-I progressions. Listen out for perfect cadences. Explore the ubiquitous I-V-vi-IV-I progression. That has a IV-I progression (the “plagal cadence”). Listen to your favourite songs and understand whether they are major or minor, and write down the chord progressions.
2) Look at chord sheets that show songs’ progressions. Notice when songs use chords from within the key (that you learned from harmonising the scales above) and when they borrow chords from outside the key. Look into how and why that works.
3) Explore minor progressions that should have a minor v chord. They sometimes borrow a major V chord. Why is that? Learn about “harmonic minor”.
Then you can go into melodic theory and after that you can explore things such as relative major and minor, circle of 5ths, sharps and flats, key signatures, inversions, modulations, modes, secondary dominants, substitutions and all sorts of other stuff. But the steps above will get you a long way.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
It will unfurl in front of you. No sweat.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
I think there are two basic problems with learning theory and both are easily overcome:
- lots of different explanations and even names for the same things. Find a course, follow it, come back to online conversations much later.
- the belief that theory will tell you what to do. Theory explains what you have done and gives you a language to communicate to others . Once you grasp it's that's way around you are freed up to make music, supported by and not restricted by theory.
I've been playing guitar for 15 years and I didn't know this haha. I've never seen it explained as simple. Great work. Wisdom awarded.
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It's difficult to explain but to me it's a bit like the difference between learning your times table by chanting them until they are in your brain against learning how to multiply and being able to do that for any two numbers.
Doh. A beer. A beer I drink
Ray. The bloke I drink beer with
Me? I’ll have another beer
Far. A long way from my beer.
So. I’ll have another beer
La-ger is the beer I drink
Tea? No thanks I’ll have a beer, which will bring me back to ....
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
Music theory is developed from a background that isn't always an easy fit with modern popular music of the last seventy years. It's a simpler fit with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star than it is with a Muddy Waters riff even though you might find the Muddy Waters riff easier to play. So you may be making arbitrary decisions about when not to focus on theory so that you can actually play something on the guitar.
You're the guy who reads the installation manual through before building the IKEA wardrobe!
Yeah. I have a bit of a problem.
Enjoy the ride!
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.