so lets do the theory thing

[lpittman]

I've been following the posts on this board the last couple of weeks, and although there is a little bit of shit been thrown around here, once in a while a good discussion comes up. I have been fiddleling around with my guitar for a while and i got sort of stuck in the same pattern of playing so running in to dave matthews' music in august made it a little more fun for a while. I guess i got intrigued by his weird chords and nasty fingerstretches, but now that i have mastered the likes of tripping billies , wwys and the stone, i would like to move on a little. So I heared gcom ( a tad aggressively maybe? ) and a couple of others who obviously know their music theory, making a rather big point out of how important it is.. Anyway, i guess what i would like to know is where do i start? Maybe some scales? Harmonic theory, so i would know what the hell a 1 5 4 5 progression is. just wanted to know if anyone is keen on sharing their knowledge:)

cheers
Lars

[gcom007]

So I heared gcom ( a tad aggressively maybe? ) and a couple of others who obviously know their music theory, making a rather big point out of how important it is..
cheers
Lars

[gcom007]

hmm, a good place to start would be to learn how to read real sheet music. It seems like a daunting task to some but it really isn't. If you played piano at any time in your life you probably already know how. but learning all the note names for the staff is a good place to start. one you get that down start learning scales...the major scale follows this pattern...

in C...

C - tonic - 1 - major
D - supertonic - 2 - minor
E - mediant - 3 - minor
F - subdominant - 4 - major
G - dominant - 5 - major
A - sub mediant - 6 - minor
B - leading tone - 7 - diminished
C - octave - 8 - major

and if you were going further you would say the next D after the octave or prime is 9, and the next E is 10...

let's think about every song in the world in the key of C, and there are a lot...what's a standard progression in that key? C-->--G-->F-->G but if you look at the notes in the scale you can see that it could be classified as 1-->5-->4-->5 and oftentimes an Am will be thrown in their which would be a sixth. Anyways, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm not a teacher and don't really know the best way at all to teach it in this setting, so let's get to something more practical and relevant first.

How does one form a major scale? It is always going to have every notename in the scale, however what changes it up is the starting note or tonic. If you were to write the major scale in the key of G, which has one sharp on the F, it would go like this...

G A B C D E F# G

D which has two sharps on the F and the C...

D E F# G A B C# D

A which has 3 sharps on F, C, and G...

A B C# D E F# G# A

and so on...well, here's the pattern...

the order of sharps is F C G D A E B

a simple way to remember this is "Fat Country Girls Don't Always Eat Beef"

before this is really applicable you need to understand the circle of fifths...this is how it works...wait, I need a way to post the ghetto circle of fifths picture I just made! Pittman, hit me up with a PM so I can send it to you to post or something...anyways...this is how it works...the circle of 5ths gets its name from the fact that each key, when traveling around the circle , is a 5th away from the preceding one...so moving clockwise from top of the circle with C major you go to G major (a 5th up from C and going upward on the staff) which has one sharp, to D major (a 5th up from G) to A major (a fifth up from D) and so on and so forth...and comparitively, when moving counterclockwise from C major, the key of F major is one flat and a 5th away from C going down on the staff, and next is Bb which is a 5th down from F and has 2b's...you shall see with the picture...notice that there are overlapping keys at the bottom of the circle. B and Cb, F# and Gb, B and Cb...these notes are enharmonic versions of each other...they sound the exact same any way you play them, however they are notated differently on the staff.

when the circle of fifths is up, if you follow the number of accidentals (otherwise known as sharps or flats) for each key, you can figure out each major scale fairly easily. again...

order of sharps: F C G D A E B

order of flats: B E A D G C F

so for say the key of E which has 4 sharps, you add four sharps in the order stated above which results in...

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

if you have something in the key of Bb, you add the first two flats from the order of flats resulting in...

Bb C D Eb F G A Bb

knowing how many sharps or flats to add will make sense once the circle of fifths is up.

so yes, work with this for now and then we'll move onto intervals and minor scales!!! and by all means ask me to clarify whatever as I probably didn't do this in any great way...enjoy though! it's a good start!

[ticohans]

I agree that the major scale is a good place to start, but I think that a better way to understand it is going with intervals as opposed to number of sharps and flats, as this is a result of the basic form of the major scale. All major scales have this pattern: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. A whole step is two semitones, and each semitone is a single fret on the guitar. So if you move up a wholestep from whatever fret you're at, you go up two frets. It's from this whole whole half, etc pattern that the number of sharps or flats for a given scale arises, and you can use this rubric as a starting place with any note you want.

[gcom007]

I agree that the major scale is a good place to start, but I think that a better way to understand it is going with intervals as opposed to number of sharps and flats, as this is a result of the basic form of the major scale. All major scales have this pattern: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. A whole step is two semitones, and each semitone is a single fret on the guitar. So if you move up a wholestep from whatever fret you're at, you go up two frets. It's from this whole whole half, etc pattern that the number of sharps or flats for a given scale arises, and you can use this rubric as a starting place with any note you want.

I thought of putting that in but decided to wait until I felt like writing about minor scales, that's going to be fun to explain since there are three of them...

[ticohans]

we can just do them one at a time. probably best to leave the harmonic and melodic for later. start with the natural, and then build from there. it's really easy to type all this stuff up, but it takes a while to absorb. I'll look through my intro theory notes and see how my teacher worked through it, but we don't have to put it all down in a week

[gcom007]

we can just do them one at a time. probably best to leave the harmonic and melodic for later. start with the natural, and then build from there. it's really easy to type all this stuff up, but it takes a while to absorb. I'll look through my intro theory notes and see how my teacher worked through it, but we don't have to put it all down in a week

exactly why I just stopped! I probably already said too much...and I agree, start with natural and then move onto the others...they really aren't too difficult to grasp if you understand the major scales though.

[MattyTrane]

http://www.strungsix.com/content/lessons/lesson1.htm
This place discusses the same thing using the interval method that tico mentioned.

[gcom007]

personally I think it's better to think musically before guitar which that site seems to emphasize more...anyone can play the scale patterns but the more you understand them the better. the theory is universal and can be applied to any instrument. too many people who don't know much about theory just learn the scale patterns and don't think about what they're doing which is why I don't think it's good to emphasize guitar much at first.

[gravedigger]

right on, man, it is a good start!. that saved me a lot of work - and I wouldn't have been able to explain it that well.

anyway, I may as well add a little bit about how chords are constructed. an Interval is the distance between two notes. In the C major scale: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C (we always use the C major scale because there's no sharps or flats) anyway, from C to D is a major 2nd interval. - C(1) to D(2). from C to E is a major 3rd interval. from C to F is an interval of a 4th, from C to G is an interval of a 5th. C to A is a 6th interval. C to B is a 7th interval. And from C to C is an 8th interval or an octave.

a chord is made by stacking 3rd intervals on top of each other. A major triad consists of the tonic, a major 3rd, a minor 3rd. so a major 3rd up from C is an E and a minor 3rd up from E is G. So a C chord consists of C, E, and G notes. a minor chord conists of a the tonic, a minor third, and a major third. so the D minor chord in the C scale would consist of the tonic, D, a minor third up (F) and a major third up from there - A.

I have a feeling that this sounds very confusing but hopefully gcom, can help tidy it up a bit. It's a lot to swallow when your first learning it, but its good to know.



major interval: two full tones or two full steps. i.e. from G to B
minor interval: one and a half full steps. i.e. from G to A#/Bb

C major (major-minor) C
D minor (minor-major) Dm
E minor (minor-major) Em
F major (major-minor) F
G major (major-minor) G
A minor (minor-major) Am
B diminished (minor-minor) Bdim
C major (major - minor) C

for 7th chords - remember stacked thirds (1-3-5-7) for C: C-E-G-B

C major7 (major-major-minor) Cmaj7
D minor7 (major-minor-minor) Dm7
E minor7 (major-minor-minor) Em7 the crash chord x-4-2-4-5-0 C#m7
F major7 (major-major-minor) Fmaj7
G dominant7(major-minor-major) Gdom7 (G7)
A minor7 (major-minor-minor) Am7
B half diminished(minor-major-minor) Bdim7
B fully diminished (minor-minor-minor) Bdim7

I hope this helps more than confuses.

peace,
Ken

[gcom007]

awww hell...

Code: Select all

interval  -  # of 1/2 steps

unison------------0
(perfect 1st)    
minor 2nd---------1
major 2nd---------2
minor 3rd---------3
major 3rd---------4
augmented 3rd-----5
perfect 4th-------5
augmented 4th*----6
diminished 5th*---6
perfect 5th-------7
augmented 5th-----8
minor 6th---------8
major 6th---------9
minor 7th---------10
major 7th---------11
octave------------12
(perfect 8th)

*these two intervals form the tritone...more on that later...

[gcom007]

Ken...by the time we're done with this everyone will be testing out of theory 1 classes!

[gravedigger]

Ken...by the time we're done with this everyone will be testing out of theory 1 classes!

yeah really

I'm better at answering specific questions than trying to give a lesson on something. I was always interesting in knowing what the hell chords I was playing, unlike my friend who can play more of John Mayer stuff than I can, who doesn't know what the fuck he's playing. And that's cool, he has a good ear. I'm always curious.

[lpittman]

hey thanks, it's great that you took the time to put that stuff up.!!

I actually played piano as a kid and did I learn some of this stuff once. But I def need a brush-up.

Thanks a lot :)

and hey gcom, you are not such a bad guy after all :D

cheers
Lars

[ticohans]

it's also worth noting that the intervals of 1st, 4ths, 5ths, and 8ths are known as "perfect." This gets into how intervals can be toyed with, and ken and elliot have alluded to it some. If you take any interval, other than the perfect one, and decrease it by a half step, you end up with a minor interval. if you take that minor interval and decrease it by a halfstep, you end up with a diminished interval. go back to the major interval now. if you increase it by a half step, you end up with an augmented interval. "perfect" intervals (4th, 5th, octave, and unision) can only be made diminished, by decreasing the interval by a half step, or augmented, by increasing the interval by a half step. there are no minor intervals for the perfects.