Guitar Music Theory: Advanced Guide to Learn to Play Guitar Chords and Scales Like a Pro

By Ethan Hayes

Good things happen when the chance exists for it to happen. But there is a limit to how much can happen and when it will do so. This is the essence of music theory. In this book, "Guitar Music Theory," you will learn what it is all about, and how you can master the guitar.

Among musical instruments, the guitar is the easiest on

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethan Hayes
• Release date: Oct 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798868957635

Book preview

Introduction

Good things happen when the chance exists for it to happen. But there is a limit to how much can happen and when it will do so. This is the essence of music theory. In this book, Guitar Music Theory, you will learn what it is all about, and how you can master the guitar.

Among musical instruments, the guitar is the easiest one to learn because the structure of the guitar allows you to change the key by merely shifting up (or down) the neck of the guitar while holding the same chord shape. You couldn't do it any easier - play the chords in all keys of the scale by moving your hand fret by fret.

It is also the most musical of instruments because it has six strings that harmonize when you strike it. You need not search for the individual notes as you do with the violin or the piano. They are all present in the chord shape. Do you get the idea? You only need to learn one shape to play all the chords of the scale. You can accompany a song or another instrument with the guitar. It is the perfect party instrument, and once you learn to play it, you can make any get together exciting and fun.

In this book, you get to learn music theory so that you play using this knowledge. Music has many mystical doors. You can discover these hidden worlds by reading all about it in this book. Begin your musical journey today; there is a lot to discover! This book tells about it in a detailed, simple language. Enrich your world today when you enter the musical sphere. You do not need any special knowledge to begin your guitar journey. Good luck and God speed!

Chapter 1

Music Theory

When we make music, we create sound punctuated by silences. To understand this, consider the analogy of the rain. Rain is droplets of water; it is not a wall of water. The water has gaps between them, and so we see the raindrops. As rain can take the form of a soft drizzle, a raging storm, or hailstones, music can be a soft country song, a rock ballad, or a metal outpouring.

Understanding the Music Alphabet

Forming music is like writing an essay with many lines and a lot of punctuation. You will learn to play a scale on the guitar and find out how to create chords in scales. It is the time to learn about the Circle of Fourths, the Circle of Fifths, and the Triads in music.

Arrange the small pieces of sound in their proper places. Then, they will sound pleasant to hear, and people will enjoy the music. The various terms mentioned above are arrangements that musicians used to create music in various genres. The music genres such as rock or country music have their separate styles and use distinct patterns of musical notes. Let us start with the basic form of music, the scale.

Music Scale

When your father calls you from the next room, you sense his presence. You know it is your father and not your mother who is calling you. This is because of the characteristics of sound, such as pitch and timbre.

When you play the musical scale, you play a sound at specific pitches separated from the next by a predetermined distance. This is like taking part in a march where everyone moves together but maintains the same distance from each other. You can easily tell where your friend is because you are standing in a specified order.

Forming a Scale

To form the scale, you must have the raw material. Here you use the English language alphabets from A to G. After G, you repeat the sequence of letters. Let us take the C scale, where the starting note C is the scale's root note. The sequence will become CDEFGABC. This pattern will repeat as octaves, meaning the notes will become shriller as you go up and decrease in tone as you go lower.

In each octave, there are twelve semitones. In each set, there are seven white keys and five black keys. The white keys represent the natural notes, while the black keys are the sharps. You could also call them flats if you refer to the higher note. After one natural note, you will have the sharp. So, C sharp (written C#) comes next to C. After C#, you will have D, which is one semitone higher than C#. And after D, we have D# and so on. But this general law fails on two occasions in the octave. This is because B and E have no sharps.

When you come to B, the next note is C. Also, when you come to E, you play F next. The twelve semitones are like this for a musical scale - CC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BC.

Theory of Intervals

You can see there are plenty of sharps on the musical scale. Why is there no sharp in the C scale? But before we proceed, let us make our perspective clear on flats. They mark the flats from the higher note. Sharps are from the lower note as C# is higher in pitch to C. The note lower to G is F#. This makes F# as Gb (b is the flat sign). We can write our musical scale to contain these - CDbDEbEFGbGAbABbBC. That said, let us move on.

The Major Scale

In the major scale, the interval pattern is a whole step, whole step, a half step followed by three more whole steps and a half step. Then we get the octave note. Let us consider the C major scale again.

The starting note is C (the root note) followed by D. We see in the musical scale that there is one semitone C# between C and D. This moves from C to D a whole step. If there is nothing between the two notes, then it becomes a half step. Again, the transition from D to E is a whole step because here, we have D# between the two. But when we come to E, we see the change is only a half-step. It is because there is nothing between E and F! The steps from F to G, G to A, and A to B have one semitone between them, making them whole steps.

The movement from B to C is a half-step because C is sharp of B.

If we denote the whole step by V and the half step by N, we have the major scale pattern as VVNVVVN. Let us see what notes we have for the A major scale. We start with the root note A and build a whole step on it. This takes us to B. Then, we need one whole step, which is B-C-C#. So, the next note is C#. Now, there is a half-step. The half step from C# is D. The first three notes are ABC#. Next is the half step that takes us to D. After this, we have three whole steps. These are E, F#, and G#. Now, there is one more half step, which gives us A. This is the octave note. An octave note is the same note as the root note, but is higher in pitch. The notes of the A major scale become ABC#DEF#G#A. We see there are three sharp notes in the A major scale.

Notation on the Scale

We call the notes of the scale its degrees. So, the first note A is the first degree of the A scale; the next one B, is the second degree, and so on. The sixth degree will be F#. We also use the notation Do Re Mi Fa So La Te to denote the seven degrees Do for the octave note. The note interval is the same in all notations. Now you know what guitar (at least the major scale) scales are, and their intervals.

Notes from the Piano

There are 88 keys on the piano, and it has its 49th key A4 (meaning the fourth octave A note) tuned to a frequency of 440 Hz. We tune the guitar using the piano and take the reference as the middle C of the piano. The frequency of middle C is 262 Hz. We denote it as C4. For your information, the earth's natural frequency is around 8 Hz (7.83 Hz, to be exact). These are extremely low frequencies and do not affect normal life routines and patterns.

The major scale is a happy scale. In other words, the one listening will hear all happy notes. If we play it fast, it forms an uplifting rhythm and people feel content.

Frequencies of the Guitar Strings

Each string of the guitar corresponds to a unique frequency. These frequencies are: