However, we can take this to much more complex or wide-ranging angles and bring music down to effectively a science. The following fretboard diagram shows you the notes along the 6th and 5th strings. This tutorial will give you an introductory overview of the different modes of the major scale.

We’re only adding it here so you have a complete understanding and you won’t use it in the vast majority of chord progressions. Between the letters of the natural musical alphabet, we have sharp and flat notes. Sharps and flats are interchangeable, meaning that an A sharp is the exact same note as a B flat. In the same vein, a D flat is the exact same note as a C sharp. Piano players have to deal with white and black keys, but as a guitar player, it’s much easier to see whole and half steps. A standard triad or seventh chord is created by stacking thirds from a root note.

The particular quality of each of these stacked thirds defines whether the chord has a major, minor or dominant tonality. The musical alphabet may seem very simple, but it's very important to cover. It is the foundation for everything you'll learn in music theory. The natural musical alphabet is simply the first 7 letters of the alphabet.

It allows you to quickly find the corresponding chords in the new key. Thankfully, those numbers are the numbers you’ve already been using to find out which chords are major and which chords are minor. When you look at the piano, any two keys right next to one another would be considered a half step apart. If you skip a key in between two notes, then they are a whole step apart. Strive for your best; you’ll have more fun when you see you’re improving. But know you’ll automatically get better at playing the guitar by just being there doing it and letting go.

This gives a performer the ability to infer their own exact tempo based on the performance instruction. Rhythm, metre and tempo all group together perfectly as they are the combined way of giving a sense of timing to music. Diatonic chords are chords that fit within the key they can be created from . Non-diatonic chords are chords that don’t exist in the key they are being used in (F#m in C major is non-diatonic as F# and C# don’t appear in C major). A chord can be as simple as two notes heard together, or as complex as a cluster of a hundred notes all played at once. Pitches, scales and melodies all overlap in music theory as they are all built on the construction of the melodic lines that you hum after hearing a song.

In the diagram below, you can see Guitar the relation between the notes and intervals of the G major scale. Before we get to the details of the major scale, let’s start with a basic understanding of what a music scale is. If you are doing this exercise using only major and minor triads, you will only complete two rows in the ‘Chord Notes’ section. While tab and notation are the most common types of sheet music found in the West today, they aren’t the only available.

That’s a seven-note scale comprising only natural notes, meaning no sharps and flats. He has a practical, hands-on approach to teaching, with a focus on the guitar fretboard and emphasis on popular songs. Desi honed his craft through decades of teaching, performing, and publishing. Pentatonic scale pattern one, as shown here, is perhaps the most widely known and used scale pattern on guitar.