Learning the Fretboard - A Primer On Scales, Arpeggios And Chords

THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING SCALES, APREGGIOS AND DIFFERENT CHORD FORMATIONS

Most casual guitarists and many guitarists that play in successful bands do not know music theory on the level that a classical instrumentalist does – with the ability to read staff and the inherent knowledge that reading music brings to the way chords and scales relate to each other.

A WORD ABOUT CHORDS

Over the years, I have broken down guitar chords into three categories for the purposes of speaking about them and relating scales, chord forms and arpeggios to them.

·         The Open Chords - these are the chords that most people start by learning, and are played near the nut using both fretted and open strings

·         Bar Chords, Upper Register – these are bar chords where the root note is located on the fifth string (such as the D at the 5th fret or the C at the 3rd fret)

·         Bar Chords, Lower Register – these are bar chords whose root note is located at the top string (such as the C on the 8^th fret, the A on the 5^th fret, etc.)

One of the purposes of this article is to get you to see beyond these easy shapes – most chords have three main positions on the neck of the guitar: the open position, the upper register bar chord and the lower register bar chord. B and F chords can only be made as bar chords or by playing tones out of the chords.

By mapping out the locations of the notes of the chord you are working on, as seen below, you can find new ways to play the entire chord or tones out of the chord for richer, fuller songs. This will allow you to give your guitar different sounds as well as a greater ability to create subharmonies, movements and single note runs into what might otherwise simply be 4 bars of a standard C chord.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PATTERNS

Most instruments are not pattern based, but interval based. The keyboard is the classic example of this – a C chord is made of three tones, the One (which is the root note, in this case C), the Three and the Five. The notes for the C chord are below:

One – C note (root)

Three – E note

Five – G note

A minor chord is made by flatting the Three (in this case the ‘E’ note moves to ‘E’ flat).

But on a guitar or other fretted instruments, chords are represented by patterns. If you look below you will see a C Bar chord at the third fret. If you take that chord shape and move it to different frets, it becomes a different chord. For instance, the same shape played at the 5^th fret becomes a D chord.

C at 3^rd Fret (an upper register chord, where the main root is on the fifth string)

D at 5^th Fret – Note that it is the same shape as the C chord above!

(Blank circles on the D indicate root notes)

Now, we want to map out where all the notes are for this chord – in this case, laying out where the triads of the C major chord are will also map the fretboard to find the notes we want.

By looking at these patterns we can figure out different combinations of ways to play chords and chord tones – this may not seem like that big a deal, but finding new tonal combinations to apply to your music can supercharge your creativity, or turn a simple progression into a work of art by playing different inversions and selected notes out of the applicable arpeggio and scale patterns.

This gives you much more room inside the song to find the inherent melody of a progression, and to spice up the progression itself. A great example of this can be seen when we look at the C Triads on the neck of the guitar. A Triad is a three note combination that makes up the chords, but Triads can also be played out of more complex chords.

Here, we see the C Triads – these are also all the notes that make up the C major chord

From the diagram above, we can pick out the familiar patterns of the C chord in question (the Open Chord Shape on the far left at the nut of the fretboard, the 3^rd fret shape and the 8^th fret shape), but we can also see all the different notes of the C chord across the entire neck of the guitar – remember, after the 12^th fret the neck simply repeats itself.

ARPEGGIOS AND CHORDS

Arpeggios are simply the notes of a chord played one at a time, the same as a scale. If you look at a book of guitar arpeggio patterns you will see that all of the patterns will fit within the diagram above. This diagram contains all the notes on the neck that are contained in the C chord, and will allow you to quickly find shapes on the neck that will expand your concept of playing a ‘simple’ C. Mapping out your fret board with these notes will allow you to play chord and tonal variations as well as different inversions (where the root note is not played first) and pick out your own single note arpeggio runs across the entire fretboard of your guitar.

With the power of patterns, once you learn these shapes by heart you will be able to repeat them in any key by moving the starting point of the pattern to a different fret. For instance, just as the D chord above is the same shape as the C chord, just on a different fret, the mapping of the D Chord (D Triads) will show the same patterns as the C Triads, just two frets further up the neck of the guitar.

Notice that you see the exact same shapes as the C Triads, just 2 frets higher – once you learn the Triad and arpeggio shapes for different types of chords, you will know them for all chords of the same type (in this instance, simple major chords), though it will take some practice to master the way you play them!

Practice by learning all the triad shapes possible for the chord you have picked out, and then start practicing those shapes as you practice the normal chord shapes. It won’t take long for you to memorize the triad and tonal shapes that are possible, and then you will be able to see how easily those shapes can be used for any key you desire. This will open up the way you think about chords!

CHORD SUBSTITUTIONS AND EXPANDING YOUR TRIADS

Making small changes in the chords you use, or using chords that can be substituted for the chords in the base melody can greatly expand the freedom you have in playing different combinations of tones and single note runs in your songs. Changing a Major chord to a Major 7^th makes a huge expansion in these possibilities, or a Minor chord to a Minor 7^th. The seventh adds a fourth tone to the chord, and gives you many more choices for chord alternatives and arpeggios. Check out the full fretboard diagram for the C Major 7^th chord quads and you will begin to get an idea of how many more possibilities adding just one tone to a chord will give you!

Not all chord substitutions are so obvious as making a Major a Major 7^th, or a Minor a Minor 7^th though. Keep in mind that depending on the way the song is constructed, not all substitutions will have the sound you are looking for – experiment with substitutions, but don’t be afraid to abandon an idea that just isn’t working out tonally!

A less obvious chord substitution is a Major chord a third above a Minor 7th root chord. This will make a lot more sense once it is translated into patterns as seen on the diagram below. If you are playing an Am 7^th on the 5^th fret, a C major chord played on the 3^rd fret (or anywhere, for that matter) can be substituted. Not only does this give you a power chord option for a Minor 7^th sound, but it also means that you can play any of the C Triads mapped out above when your root chord is an Am 7.

This will allow you to switch between tones and inversions from both the Am7 chord and the C chord, giving you a huge amount of choices in how to play the song.

An easy way to find this pattern is to remember that wherever you play a lower register Minor 7 chord (root note on the (top) 6^th string) it will go with the higher register major chord (root note on the 5^th string) 2 frets lower. So the 5^th fret Am7 goes with the 3^rd fret C Major, the 7^th fret Bm7 goes with the 5^th fret D Major, etc.

Check out the diagram below to see how these chords fit together!

You can see the C Major chord outlined in blue, while the Am7 is outlined in red. When you look at the notes, you will see that the Am7 has just one note extra (the A) from the C Major, which is C – E – G, so the notes for Am7 are A – C – E – G. If you move the Minor 7^th chord from the 5^th to the 8^th fret, it becomes a Cm7 and the companion chord (in blue) becomes the F Major chord with the root on the 5^th string at the 6^th fret.

All the patterns for triads, arpeggios and tonal combinations that you learn for the Am7 – C pairing will be exactly the same for the Cm7 – F pairing, just 3 frets higher on the neck of the guitar.

Find a good chord book that lists alternative or substitution chords to help you explore this powerful tool, and buy a blank guitar manuscript book to do your own mapping of the fretboard. This will help familiarize you with the fretboard, and is also an excellent memory aid (writing anything down as opposed to looking at pictures or videos triggers different neural pathways in the brain, reinforcing the memories of the material copied down). Oddly enough, according to studies using a keyboard for typing or working with a screen does not give the same benefit as making notes with pen and paper.

SCALES – THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF MELODY

Chords form the basic building block of a song, shaping the song’s rhythm and giving it different tonal characteristics – minor chords for slow sad songs, happy little major chords for fun, bouncy songs, or any combination you can think of. In the example below, it shows one pattern of a C Major scale – with all scales there are 5 -7 patterns you will need to learn. All these pattern are the same scale, but by learning all of the patterns you will know the scale across the entire fretboard of the guitar, and will be able to play the C Major scale (or the same type of scale in any key, for that matter) anywhere on the neck.

All melodies are made of scales one way, or a hybrid of scales that you might stumble across. Just like chords, the scales on a guitar are learned largely by patterns. Like arpeggios, scales are usually played one note at a time, though striking multiple notes can be a great thing!

Any time you hear any single note runs in a song, they are part of a scale or arpeggio.

And, just like chords, once you learn the blues scale or the major scale in one key you will know it in every key – just start the first pattern of the scale on a different fret and it will be in a different key! Once you know these patterns there are also some other tricks that will allow you to easily change the way the scale you are playing interacts with the chords of the rhythm section, giving you different sound palettes as you build your leads or single note runs in the melody structure.

For example, moving the scale pattern below to the 8^th fret will change the scale from the C Ionian Major scale to the C Mixolydian (A mode of the Major scale). The easy way to keep track of where the scales can be used is to think about playing them over the two Bar chord shapes, the higher register C bar chord at the 3^rd fret and the lower register C bar chord at the 8^th fret. Anywhere you play a conventional C bar chord you can start the scale pattern, which will make it a different Mode of the Major scale, in this case Ionian and Mixolydian!

Both of these scales can also be played over Cm and Cm 7 chords as well, but don’t neglect learning the different types of minor scales – they offer wonderful melodic possibilities.

Once a guitarist knows the shape and patterns of all the modes of the major scale, the scale can be played in any key by simply moving the 1^st position of the scale to a different starting fret on the guitar. Find a good scale book to learn all the patterns for the different types of scales. For rock and country music, the Pentatonic scale and the Major are two of the most important scales you can learn.

Just like the Major scale, a shortcut to finding where to play the pentatonic scale can be found by rooting the starting position to the standard chord positions – in this case, a C or Cm can be played at the 3^rd fret and the 8^th fret in bar form.

The pattern below is the Cm Pentatonic scale:

 Note that this pattern of the Cm Pentatonic scale sits right on top of the 8^th fret, a prime position for the Cm chord. This pattern can be played on the 5^th fret, which makes it a C Major Pentatonic scale, but I have also had good luck playing the scale at the 3^rd fret whether the C chord is Major or Minor. As you learn the different scale patterns and how they relate to their root chords you will find that there are multiple ways to play the scale against the chord.

This may seem a little intimidating if you are not already getting into scales and arpeggios, but as you map the fretboard for chord and arpeggio locations, or learn the patterns above you will find yourself making fast progress. If you are already playing scales and arpeggios, looking at the patterns in this way can help you expand your abilities and understanding of the fretboard and come up with great new tonal combinations from simple chords and scales!

James House of Deals, one of the best music stores in Lincolnton offers great deals on instruments, PA Gear, recording equipment, accessories and much more! When you need accessories or guitars in Lincolnton come to James House of Deals!