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 8th fret, the A on the 5th
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 5th
fret becomes a D chord.
C at 3rd Fret (an upper register chord, where the
main root is on the fifth string)
D at 5th 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 3rd fret shape and the 8th
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 12th 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 7th makes a
huge expansion in these possibilities, or a Minor chord to a Minor 7th.
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 7th 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 7th, or a Minor a Minor 7th 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
7th on the 5th fret, a C major chord played on the 3rd
fret (or anywhere, for that matter) can be substituted. Not only does this give
you a power chord option for a Minor 7th 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) 6th
string) it will go with the higher register major chord (root note on the 5th
string) 2 frets lower. So the 5th fret Am7 goes with the 3rd
fret C Major, the 7th fret Bm7 goes with the 5th 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 7th chord
from the 5th to the 8th fret, it becomes a Cm7 and the
companion chord (in blue) becomes the F Major chord with the root on the 5th
string at the 6th 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 8th
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 3rd fret and the lower register C bar
chord at the 8th 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 1st 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 3rd
fret and the 8th 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 8th fret, a prime position for the Cm chord. This pattern
can be played on the 5th fret, which makes it a C Major Pentatonic
scale, but I have also had good luck playing the scale at the 3rd
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!
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