John Coltrane

Welcome to what is, perhaps, the hardest aspect of jazz improvisation; what has made many a musician cower in the corner while others step up to the plate, knock back massive grand slams, and take home the hottest girl in the club (hopefully not the girl that came in with the guy now cowering in the corner).

To date, the rite of passage for aspiring jazz musicians has been whether or not they can effectively improvise over the song Giant Steps, the seminal composition by tenor saxophonist John Coltrane.

What makes the song – and others like it that Coltrane wrote – so challenging, is a sophisticated chord progression that has proven to be very difficult for most to play, let alone master.

So, What Are the Changes?

The basis of Coltrane Changes lies in the interval of a Major 3rd. This interval divides the major scale into three equal parts – C, E, and G#/Ab – for example.

Where it gets a little tricky is understanding where (and how) these changes get applied. Let’s take a standard ii-V-I progression in the key of C Major – Dm7 / / /  |  G7 / / /  |  CMaj7 / / /  |  / / / /

What we want to do here is target the last CMaj7, but we get there by substituting the rest of the progression with the Coltrane Changes. Since we know we want to end up in C Major, we can use the Major 3rd cycle to get there. In this kind of progression, where the ii-V-I lines up evenly across four bars, the changes line up like this:

Dm7 / Eb7 /  |  AbMaj7 / B7 /  |  EMaj7 / G7 /  |  CMaj7

What we’ve done here is worked forward towards the CMaj7 while moving backward in intervals of Major 3rds. So, after two beats of Dm7 we know we want to get to Ab Major (Maj7 chord). To get there we put its V7 chord in front of it – Eb7. So, two beats of Dm7 and then into a V-I in Ab Major (Eb7 to AbMaj7).

After Ab Major we want to go down another Major 3rd to E. (If you are having trouble with this, maybe a quick review of enharmonic note names will help.) Precede the EMaj7 chord with its V and that gives us B7. To finish things off we want to have the V of C Major lead us to the last chord, so we use G7. You might be able to visualize it better this way:

-- (V7  | I)    (V7 | I)    (V7 | I)
Dm7 Eb7 | AbMaj7 B7 | EMaj7  G7 | CMaj7

Where this becomes even more interesting is when you apply this Major 3rd/Coltrane Changes principle to reharmonizing other jazz standards. As a very basic example, try improvising over the above changes with the song “Impressions.” Since Impressions uses a long modal vamp on Dm7, you can think of that Dm7 as the ii chord in C Major. The above example is technically in the key of C, so you can really open up the way you approach a solo by playing thinking these changes while you solo over a long Dm7 chord pedal. Very cool stuff!

Coltrane wasn’t necessarily the first person to play around with the Major 3rd progression, though he certainly is the one to bring it to the forefront. The song “Have You Met Miss Jones” by Rodgers and Hart (1937) has a bridge section with a Major 3rd cycle. You can check out the Wikipedia page on Coltrane Changes for a bit more information about that.

I certainly won’t claim to have mastered this concept; not by a long shot. But I really like the idea of superimposing a seemingly unrelated chord progression and making it work. Consider this concept – Coltrane Changes – to be a goal to aspire to, so you can get your girl back from you-know-who during the next local jam session.

What Are “Coltrane Changes”? is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

Arnold Schoenberg

Today I want to expand our horizons beyond the more traditional aspects of music theory and talk about a more modern convention known as “12 Tone Music.” This fascinating yet little-known area of contemporary classical music composition has also had its share of controversy, which I’ll discuss a bit for the sake of historical context.

But first, we need to give you a little background on what 12-tone music is, the rules (yes, there are rules) in creating music according to 12-tone principles, and at the end I’ll give you an idea of how you can apply this concept to the guitar.

Shall we?

The Basics of 12-Tone Music

Luckily there aren’t many, but we’ll cover the basics. In essence, you use the chromatic scale (12 pitches) to create a “set.” You can put the pitches in any order you want, but the idea is that you can’t repeat any note until all 12 have been used.

For the sake of an example, here is a set:

This set is known as the prime series. It is also notated as P0 (P-zero).

Where it starts to get interesting is how you build a tone grid, from which you get a complete master set of tone rows to play with. Follow me on this, it will make sense in a second.

Creating The First Inversion Set

What we want to do here is figure out what the intervals are between each note, and then invert them to create the first horizontal (“Inversion”) row – called I0 – in our grid. So, the interval from C to F# is a tritone up. We reverse that to get a tritone down and insert that note into the inversion row.

Next, we take the interval from F# to G and invert that as well. F# to G is a 1/2 step up, so we will go 1/2 step down from F#, which is F.

Continuing along with the rest of the intervals from P0 to create I0 gives us this:

Now that we have our first inversion row, we can fill in the rest of the inversion rows by using the exact same interval relationships in P0 but starting on the notes from I0. In order words:

• The first interval in P0 is a tritone – C to F#.
• Start with F# (the first note in the P1 set) and go up a tritone. That gives us C.

• From F# to G in P0 is a 1/2 step up, so now we want to go a 1/2 step up from the C, which is C#

Follow this same formula for all of the notes in set P1, as well as all of the notes in sets P2 – P12. The complete master structure will look like this:

The horizontal rows moving from left to right are called prime sets. Horizontal rows moving from right to left are called retrograde sets. Vertical rows moving from top to bottom are called inversion sets, and vertical rows moving from bottom to top are called retrograde inversion sets.

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s some pretty cool stuff. You now have a crapload of sets to work with. The controversy with 12-tone music lies in the debate of whether or not this makes the music too mathematical and lacking emotion. I can certainly see that side of the argument, but if you’ve listened to the masters of 12-tone composition (Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, etc.) I think you will come to the same conclusion as many others, which is that one thing definitely not lacking from their compositions is emotional content.

But How Does This Apply To Guitar?

Well, certainly it opens up a new way of composing, doesn’t it? That’s one point. But, what I like to do with these tone rows is create an octave displacement exercise. Pat Martino uses this concept with the chromatic scale to create some of his lines. (Though Martino attributes this chromatic displacement concept to his own discovery, he actually learned it from Dennis Sandole.)

Let’s take the first set – P0 – and displace some of the notes by an octave to create a more interesting sound (click to enlarge).

You can now use this as either a very hip line in your solo, or as a gymnastic exercise that you can move up chromatically for fingering practice.

I encourage you all to check out some 12-tone composers and dig into what they are doing. It’s ridiculously hip stuff, and I’m sure it will resonate with some of you.

Music Theory Lesson: Introduction to 12-Tone Music is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

Glenn Tipton - Judas Priest. 'Nuff Said!

Ever notice how power chords, even when played with a clean tone in a blues song, just sound so right? Ever wonder why a major chord sounds so much more concrete than a minor chord? Ever have trouble hearing that F# played over a C chord, thinking it’s just a touch “off?”

The answer is much more than just the style of music you like or who is playing the chord. The answer has to do with the naturally-occurring series of harmonic frequencies that are generated when any single note is played. The answer lies in the multiples of a fundamental tone and their vibrations, spread out over several octaves and with ever-diminishing clarity.

The answer, is the Overtone Series.

You can cue up the imperial army music here if you like for effect, though the reality is that the concept of the overtone series is quite simple to grasp and once understood will really help further your knowledge of music.

Good, Good, Good… Good Vibrations

The Beach Boys had it right; it’s all about good vibrations. When a note is played, it vibrates as a waveform. For example, the note “A440″ — which is the standard tuning note in Western music — vibrates at 440 cycles per second. When that note is played, however, a series of other tones, sympathetic tones, perhaps (my explanation, not necessarily a proven scientific fact), also resonates. In essence, one note actually creates several notes. Take a look at the music staff below, which illustrates the order in which the overtones of a given note occur:

If play the note ‘C’, a naturally-occurring ‘G’ located a perfect fifth higher is also produced.  (If you don’t understand the intervalic relationships between pitches, I suggest you read my intervals music theory lesson first.) Above that another ‘C’ note an octave higher than the fundamental tone is heard. Continuing up you hear another ‘C’ note two octaves higher, then a third (‘E’), a fifth (‘G’), a b7 (‘Bb’ – and an approximate pitch), etc.

Please bear in mind that this is a very over-simplified explanation. It’s enough to get you started, but there is a bit more to it. Quite frankly, the “bit more to it” is bland and boring, and we Fretheads are all about fun and zaniness, right? (Yeah, right…)

Back to that Power Chord

To get back to my article opener about the power chord, you can see just by looking at the music staff that the interval of a fifth (the same interval that power chords are made of) sound very strong if for nothing else than they happen naturally. The same principle is also why a major triad sounds so heavy and grounded than other types of triads.

So I suggest you break out that Gibson Explorer that’s been sitting in your closet, crank up the Marshall stack, and start rockin’ out to Living After Midnight right away!

Music Theory Lesson: The Overtone Series is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

If you remember from my chord structures article I showed you how to build chords from scales. We covered major, minor, dominant, half-diminished (also known as minor 7b5) and fully diminished chords. We also went from triads to 7^th chords, 9^th chords, 11^th chords, and 13^th chords. If you need a refresher, please go back and review that article.

So what exactly is a chord inversion?

To explain this, let’s use the C Major scale once again and use the C Major triad as a staring point:

And let’s also take a look at an F Major triad:

Nothing wrong with these two chords separately. The problem is what happens when you want to play them one after another as part of a chord progression. On your polyphonic instrument of choice (um, your guitar, of course!) play the C triad followed by the F triad and try to make it sound musical. It’s not bad, right? But something tells me you’re thinking it can probably sound better. You may not be able to put your finger on it, but it’s somehow lacking. That’s where inversions come in.

First Inversion

What we’re going to do is manipulate the F major triad. It may not make sense at first, but when we put it all together it should turn on the light bulb over your head.  Okay, so what I want you to do with the F major triad is take the bottom note – in this case the ‘F’ – and move it up an octave. That will give you this:

Same notes, but in a different order it produces a slightly different sound. Play it and see what you think. What we did was “invert” the first note, hence it’s called a chord inversion. For the sake of theoretical reference, we refer to this as “first inversion.” In traditional music, especially church music and organ/piano music, you will sometimes see this written under a chord like this:

6
3

The 6/3 written under the chord tells you that this particular chord is in first inversion. These numbers refer to the position of the notes. Starting at the bottom note of the inverted chord (the ‘A’ in this case), move up 3 steps to get the next note (C), and move up six steps from the bottom note to get the next note (F). Man those music dudes were smart back then!

Second Inversion

So let’s do it again. We’ll take the bottom note again (this time the ‘A’ note) and move it up an octave as well. That gives us the following:

This is “second inversion,” also designated by:

6
4

Try playing this chord voicing and see what you think. Sound good? Aside from the root position chord, this second inversion chord sounds the next strongest of the three. Why is that? I believe it’s because of the interval of a fourth between the bottom two notes. It’s a “grounded” sound, and one that the human ear identifies as stable.

Right. So we have the root position chords and the two inversions. Now let’s go back to the chord progression from C Major to F Major. We’ve identified that it sounds pretty good, but could perhaps sound better. What happens if we play the C Major chord, and then play one of the inversions of the F Major chord? Let’s see:

C Major followed by F major in first inversion gives us:

Play it and see what you think. Again, it sounds pretty good, but in my opinion it could still sound better. So let’s try playing C major followed by F major in second inversion. I’m going to cheat a little bit, however, and also drop the entire F major chord down an octave.

Play it and see how it sounds.

Woah! There’s something about this chord progression using the F Major in second inversion voicing that really connects the two chords. It’s the fact that the ‘C’ note in the bass is common to both chords. We, as humans, feel more comfortable when we can see and hear things that are connected and easily relatable. In this case the ‘C’ note in the bass of both chords provides a stable base that gives the listener a feeling of familiarity.

7th Chords

Cool. So we just did triad inversions. Well guess what? We’re not quite done yet. You can also do the same thing with seventh chords:

Because we have four notes per chord, we can do three inversions per chord. Notice the new inversion numbers.

The same rules apply to 9^th, 11^th, and 13^th chords, but to be honest these chord extensions weren’t used “back in the day” when the traditional inversion numbering system was created. Those notes were considered off-limits for chords, so we don’t really use any numerical designation for them.

That’s about it. It’s very straight forward and simple. What you should do now is take some of your favorite progressions and play with the inversions to see what you can come up with. It will not only expand your capacity to play new things on your instrument, but hopefully it will also stimulate some creativity in your writing.

Enjoy!

Music Theory Lesson: Chord Inversions is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

Alright, so in this lesson I’m going to talk about chords. Chords are another very important part of music, obviously. As per usual, we’ll discuss chords using the C Major scale.

Building Triads

To build chords off each scale degree, all you really have to do is start on the first note and build chords by stacking every other note on top of each other. In the beginning we’re going to work with triads. A “triad” is a three-note chord.

Okay, starting on the note ‘C’ we’re going to stack every other note; so we’ll skip the next note ‘D’ and stack the E. Then we’ll skip the next note ‘F’ and stack the ‘G’. This gives us C, E, G:

This is known as a C triad. We’ll figure out what kind of C triad it is in a minute. First, we want to continue building triads off of each note of the scale. Starting on ‘D’ will give us D, F, and A:

Going through all the rest of the triads will look like this:

Triads galore! We now have all of the triads associated with the C Major scale. Try playing them on your guitar and hear how they sound. They are all technically the key of C Major, but each chord has a distinct sound.

Triad Types

We now need to figure out what type of chord each triad is (major, minor, augmented, diminished, etc…). To do this we have to go back to my lesson on intervals. (If you need a refresher, go and read the intervals article now.)

If we analyze the intervallic relationships between each note, we know that C to E is a major third, and E to G is a minor third. This relationship (major third followed by minor third) is known as a major triad. So, the above chord is a C Major triad.

Try the same thing with D:

The intervallic relationship of this triad is a minor third followed by a major third. This is known as a minor chord. So, the above chord is a D minor chord.

• A triad with a major third followed by a major third is known as an augmented triad.
• A triad with a minor third followed by another minor third is known as a diminished triad.

If we go back to all of the triads built from the C Major scale, we can now analyze each chord and figure out what type of triad each one is.

Roman Numerals

So within a C Major scale we have three major triads, three minor triads, and one diminished triad. We’re going to hearken back to the days of yore once again and assign each one of these triads a roman numeral. This helps us to quickly determine what chord we are talking about. Where this really comes in handy is when playing jazz. Quite often you’ll find situations where jazz songs (called “standards”) will be played in different keys. Perhaps one person will like to play On Green Dolphin Street in C, but someone else will play it in Eb. These situations – which happen all the time – make it very difficult to memorize tunes. Because of this, many people will memorize a tune according to the roman numerals associated with each chord, rather than the chord name. This way you only have to learn the song once and apply it to any key.

Staring on the first chord we’ll assign roman numerals to each scale degree/chord:

Notice that some of the roman numerals are uppercase, and some are lowercase. This is the music theory way of telling the player what type of chord it is.

• Uppercase numerals represent major chords.
• Lowercase numerals represent minor chords.
• Lowercase numerals with a small circle after it represent a diminished chord.
• Augmented chords (not shown here) will be an uppercase numeral with a small plus sign (+) after it.

Once you’re used to seeing chords represented this way it really makes things very easy. You’ll be memorizing tunes much quicker (though admittedly I’m still working on this one myself).

Seventh Chords (7th Chords)

Do you remember in my intervals article where I was discussing 9th, 11th, and 13th interval degrees? It is with the study of chords that these intervals become most apparent. What we want to do now is build extended chords from the triads and see what we come up with. Using the same skip/stack procedure that we used to build the triads, we want to add one more note to each triad. This will give us “seventh chords.” We call them seventh chords because the top note of the chord is seven scale degrees away from the bottom note (also known as the “root” of the chord). Here are the seventh chords in the C major scale:

As with triads, uppercase and lowercase numerals are used, as are the circle and plus signs to designate diminished and augmented chords, and the number 7 tells us that us that we are dealing with a seventh chord.

Looking at the above seventh chord chart you’ll see “Dom 7” and “½ dim 7.” What is that you ask? Well… “Dom 7” means “Dominant 7th chord” and “½ dim 7” means “half-diminished 7th chord.” For now, keep in mind that a Dominant 7th chord is a major triad with a minor third from the fifth of the chord to the seventh. A ½ diminished 7th chord is a diminished triad with a minor third from the fifth to the seventh. (In jazz circles the ½ diminished chord is known as a “minor 7b5” (minor seven flat five) chord.)

There is also a fully-diminished seventh chord (just called a diminished seventh chord), which are three minor third intervals. There are also many others, but let’s stick with these for now.

Extended Chords

Take each seventh chord and add another interval on top of that – these are ninth chords. For example, a C Major ninth chord is C, E, G, B, D; a D minor ninth chord is D, F, A, C, E. You can do the rest on your own.

11th chords would add a third over the 9th, and 13th chords would add a third over the 11th. 13th chords basically use every note of a particular scale, but stacked in thirds instead of played consecutively as you would when playing a scale.

Phew! That’s a lot of chord stuff to absorb, but you’re now well on your way. Once we start getting into jazz theory and advanced chord structures all of this information will start coming together and we’ll be making some wonderful music.

Enjoy!

Music Theory Lesson: Chord Structures is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

As always, we’re going to start working from the C Major scale. To once again refresh your memory:

C D E F G A B

What we’re going to do is build different scales off of each scale degree. It doesn’t get much easier than this:

C D E F G A B C

D E F G A B C D

E F G A B C D E

F G A B C D E F

G A B C D E F G

A B C D E F G A

B C D E F G A B

Naming the Modes

Play through each of them a little bit to get an idea of what they sound like. The idea here is that each mode has its own tonal center, despite the fact that they are technically all the C Major scale. Make sense?

Now, we have to give names to these things. Luckily, they already have names; we just have to know what they are. Well, back in the day the music dudes decided to give each mode Greek names. They are:

C Major scale starting on C = Ionian mode
C Major scale starting on D = Dorian mode
C Major scale starting on E = Phrygian mode
C Major scale starting on F = Lydian mode
C Major scale starting on G = Mixolydian mode
C Major scale starting on A = Aeolian mode
C Major scale starting on B = Locrian mode

Once again, these names are just something you’re going to have to commit to memory. Collectively, these seven modes are known as the “church modes.” Bear in mind that these mode names aren’t specific to the C Major Scale. Any mode based on the second scale degree of a major scale will be the Dorian mode of that scale. So, for example, Ab Dorian is based on the Gb Major Scale.

Alternate Method of Determining The Modes

Okay, so we have the names of the modes. Pretty cool, but the problem is that we’re still just operating in the key of C Major. That’s not a lot of fun. Obviously, you’re going to want apply this methodology (finding the modes) to all of the keys, but that’s also pretty boring in and of itself. Where things get fun is when you take the intervallic relationships within each mode and figure out what makes them tick.

I’ve already discussed the intervals of the Major Scale (from now on in this article referring to as the Ionian mode). We don’t need to go through this again. So let’s start with the Dorian mode and see how they relate to the intervals of the Ionian mode.

• Think of the Dorian mode as an Ionian mode with a flat 3rd and 7th.
• Think of the Phrygian mode as an Ionian mode with a flat 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th.
• Think of the Lydian mode as an Ionian mode with a sharp 4th.
• Think of the Mixolydian mode as an Ionian mode with a flat 7th.
• Think of the Aeolian mode as an Ionian mode with a flat 3rd, 6th, and 7th. (The Aeolian mode is also known as “natural minor scale” by the way…)
• Think of the Locrian mode as an Ionian mode with a flat 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th.

If you relate every mode to the Ionian mode, you start to see much greater differences than just having everything in the key of C Major. You can also simplify further by associating one mode to the intervals of another. For example, remembering Phrygian mode as an Ionian mode with a flat 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th can be quite a lot to remember. However, intervalically-speaking, the Phrygian mode is the same as an Aeolian mode with a flat 2nd. Since the Aeolian mode already has the 3rd, 6th, and 7th scale degrees lowered in relation to the Ionian mode, just remember to further add a lowered 2nd and you have Phrygian mode. Similarly, the Locrian mode can be thought of as an Ionian mode with everything flatted except the root and 4th. Basically, whatever method you use to remember the associations is perfectly fine.

Experimenting With the Modes

Here is where things start to get fun. Although you should absolutely be able to relate each mode to its key signature/tonal center, applying these modes to your playing as they relate to smaller groups of chords within a composition opens up a whole world of sonic possibilities. For example:

When playing over a C Major chord, basic theory would dictate that you play the C Ionian mode (or any of the church modes associated with it). In many ways this sounds pretty cool. However, the problem lies with the ‘F’ note. The C Major chord has the note ‘E’ in it. The note ‘F,’ which is part of the C Ionian mode, is one half step away from the note ‘E’. a lot of the time this doesn’t sound that great, especially when you end up hanging on the ‘F’ note (accidentally or otherwise). Especially in jazz improvisation circles you’re often taught not to hang on the ‘F’ against the ‘E’ of the C Major chord. Of course you can break the rules, but we’re not quite there yet.

So what do we do? We certainly don’t want to take out one of the notes we can use; that would suck. So how about this: take a look back at the church mode explanations at the beginning of the post. Notice that the Lydian mode is the same as the Ionian mode with a raised 4th degree. Some quick calculations tell me that in the key of C Major the 4th is F. How convenient for us! If we raised the 4th (F) ½ step to F#, we no longer seem to have the problem of playing the ‘F’ over the ‘E’ of the C Major chord. Try it; play a C Major chord and then run over a C Lydian mode (C D E F# G A B C) to hear how it sounds. At least to me it sounds awesome.

With this in mind there are two approaches we can now use to play over a C Major chord. The first is that when we approach a Major chord we can substitute the Lydian mode for the Ionian mode. This is great, but doesn’t always work, so use it with caution. The second approach is that if you look at the C Lydian mode (C D E F# G A B C) and go back to my article on key signatures, hopefully you’ll recognize that C Lydian is exactly the same as the key of G Major. Pretty cool, eh? We now know that you can play any of the modes of G Major over a C Major chord.

Woo hoo! We’re making progress now.

Try this for a while. I will give you one word of caution, however; you don’t really want to play Lydian mode over EVERY SINGLE major chord you come across. In theory (pun intended) this is okay, but once we get into chords and chord theory you’ll understand why you don’t always want to play the Lydian mode over every major chord. For now just take my word for it.

Cool, so we can play over major chords now. What about minor chords? Well… let’s go back to our church modes chart and see which mode is most closely related to a natural minor scale. Any ideas?

Yeah, I’m sure you figured it out. The Aeolian mode (also known as the “natural minor” scale) would work perfectly. Try it. Play an A minor chord and then play the A Aeolian mode over it. Hear how it sounds. Do you like it? It’s pretty cool, but in my opinion it’s pretty boring after a while. *sigh* So let’s go back to the church mode chart and find the NEXT closest mode for a minor chord.

Have you found it yet? I’ll give you a hint… the Dorian Mode! (Okay, not really a hint, I gave it away. That’s how I roll!)

The Dorian Mode in ‘A’ would be A B C D E F# G A. Same as the G Major scale, and technically would also work over a C Major chord.

But we’re talking about the A minor chord here (A, C, E). The same rule applies with playing the ‘F’ against the ‘E’, though it’s less annoying when played over an A minor chord for some reason. Try playing the A Dorian mode over an A minor chord and hear how it sounds. It sounds good to me.

There are a ton of other possibilities, but I think it would be best to stop here – at least until we’ve covered chords, which will vastly open up the possibilities of what you can play. But for now I’ll leave you with this information. Try the Lydian and Dorian modes especially and see how you like it. At first they may sound “out,” but before too long you’ll really start to dig those hip new sounds.

Enjoy!

Music Theory Lesson: Scales and Modes Primer is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

There are two basic types of intervals – minor and major.

For the sake of simplicity were going to work with the note C as the starting note. The note C looks like this:

The first interval is the minor 2nd. To figure out what note this is we first want to figure out what a 2nd from C is. Basically, all you have to do is count up from the C note, using C as 1. So, if C is 1, then D must be 2 (the 2nd), right?

Well done. But we still have to determine the minor or major part of the interval. This is where key signatures come in. If you remember my key signatures article (shame on you if you don’t), the list of pitches in Western Music is:

C – C#/Db – D – D#/Eb – E – F – F#/Gb – G – G#/Ab – A – A#/Bb – B/Cb

For now, think of a minor interval as working with half steps, and think of major as working with whole steps. It’s not quite that simple in the grand scheme of things, but in dealing with intervals of a 2nd the concept will do.

If we are trying to determine a minor second, you want to go up one half step from the starting note (C in this case), which brings you to C#/Db. A minor second from C is C#/Db. (Remember that C# and Db are enharmonically the same.) They are notated this way:

Since we moved up one half step to get the minor second, to get the major second we want to move up another half step. You can also think of it as moving up one whole step from the original note. This gives us the note D:

Often you will hear someone say “D natural.” It’s the same note; saying “natural” after the note name implies that the tone is neither sharp nor flat, but just the plain old generic note.

If we continue to the minor third, we move up another half step from D which gives us D#/Eb:

The Major third would be E (natural).

Is it making sense to you so far? I’m going to assume the answer is yes, which is great. You should go through the rest of the intervals up to the octave yourself. When you think you have all of the intervals figured out in the key of C Major, try to do the rest with ALL of the major keys.

Here is something interesting to point out. Take the minor third example (C to Eb), reverse the order of notes (Eb to C), and move the C note up an octave. It looks like this:

If you had done your assignment and finished the rest of the intervals on your own you’ll notice that this interval is a major sixth. The point behind this exercise is to understand the relationship between intervals. When you reverse the order of notes and displace the octave, a minor interval automatically becomes a major interval. Also, the intervals are correlative. Meaning:

2nd correlates to 7th
3rd correlates to 6th
4th correlates to 5th
5th correlates to 4th
6th correlates to the 3rd
7th correlates to the 2nd

• A minor third when inverted properly becomes a major 6th (C to Eb is minor third; Eb to C is a major sixth).
• A major second (when inverted properly) becomes a minor 7th (C to D is a major second; D to C is a minor seventh).

Those Damn Wrenches!

There are three more small wrenches to throw into the mix. I figured I would save them for last, just in case you thought you were actually getting a handle on intervals and how they work. These wrenches are three other types of intervals in addition to major and minor. These new interval types are:

Perfect intervals
Augmented intervals
Diminished intervals

The perfect intervals are easy. Perfect intervals really only refer to 4ths and 5ths, when the notes are in accordance with the key signature. So in the key of C, the interval from C to F is known as a perfect 4th. The interval from C to G is known as a perfect 5th. In Ab, a perfect 4th would be Db, and in E a perfect 5th would be B.

If you were raise the F in the first example to F# this interval (C to F#) would be considered an augmented 4th. In the jazz world you could call it a sharp 4 or a raised 4th. It’s also commonly referred to as a tritone in all forms of music. (Tritone implies a flatted fifth interval, which is enharmonically the same as a raised fourth. The tritone interval cuts the major scale precisely in half).

A diminished fifth would technically be the same as the augmented fourth, so from C the diminished fifth would be Gb.

(I’m sorry that I don’t have a concrete way of explaining this better than I have.)

In my opinion, augmented and diminished is only used when describing intervals of the fourth and fifth.

Here’s a quick recap list of intervals in the key of C:

C to Db = minor second
C to D = major second
C to Eb = minor third
C to E = major third
C to F = perfect fourth
C to F# = augmented fourth (raised 4th, sharp 4)
C to Gb = diminished fifth (flat 5th – enharmonically the same as C to F#)
C to G = perfect fifth
C to Ab = minor sixth
C to A = major sixth
C to Bb = minor seventh
C to B = major seventh

Going Beyond the Octave

Sounds like a bad Dr. Who episode or something. Anyway, music obviously doesn’t stop at the octave; otherwise music would be very boring. If you go one whole step higher than the octave C, you have the note D again. This note is nine steps higher from the original (root) note, so we call this interval a 9th.

• The 9th is the interval of a second displaced an octave higher.
• An 11th is the interval of a fourth displaced an octave higher.
• A 13th is the interval of a sixth displaced an octave higher.

There really are no 15th, 17th, or 19th intervals to speak of. The reason for this is if you were to spell out all of the notes in a scale as a chord (playing every other note in order rather than every note in succession) all of the notes would be used up by the time you got to the 13th (the 6th of the scale). A 15th would be two octaves plus a third higher from the root, so we just say E, two octaves higher and leave the math to the guys at MIT and Intel.

9th, 11th, and 13th intervals become way more exciting – and useful – when the topic of chords comes up, and I’ll be hipping y’all to that very soon, so stay tuned!

Music Theory Lesson: Intervals is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

C    C#/Db   D   D#/Eb   E   F   F#/Gb   G   G#/Ab   A   A#/Bb   B/Cb   B#/C (again)

All of these notes are a half step apart and located on the following keys of a piano:

Please take notice of the “#” and “b” symbols after some of the note names. These are known as “sharp” and “flat” notes, respectively. In layman’s terms, a “sharp” note (#) implies that the note/tone/pitch is one half step higher than the note that came before it. C#, for example, is one half step higher than C. Similarly, a “flat” note (b) implies that the note/tone/pitch is one half step lower than the note that came before it; Db is a half step lower than D.

You may be wondering why some of the notes in the list are separated by a slash, or why they are listed as “X or X” on the piano graphic. Notes such as C# and Db are known as “enharmonic notes.” C# and Db are exactly the same; they sound exactly the same if you were to hear them, and they are located in exactly the same fret on the guitar.

I must admit that it’s hard to explain the jump you have to make from simply learning the notes to understanding what key signatures are and how they function. The basic idea is that music compositions usually have a strong, core tonal center from which the music bases itself. These tonal centers provide an easily-identifiable place of recognition not only for the listener, but also for the composer. You may often hear people say, “xyz song is in the key of Bb,” or “Play this in E Major.” When these things are mentioned, the speaker is referring to a key signature.

The Major Keys

In a major key, the intervals of notes from one to another follows this system:

Root note | Whole step (same as two half steps) | Whole Step | Half Step | Whole Step | Whole Step | Whole Step | Half Step

It’s pretty easy, actually. Using this list of intervallic relationships, and starting on the note ‘C’ for the sake of simplicity, a C Major Scale will look like this:

C  D  E  F  G  A  B  (back to C, one octave higher)

If you’re having trouble figuring this out, go back to the list of notes/pitches at the beginning of this article, start on the ‘C’ note, and move forward the appropriate number of steps (half step or whole step) to find the next note.

Key Cycles

Traditionally, we memorize the major keys in a cycle of 4ths, so going up four diatonic (“in key”) pitches from C brings us to F. In all my years of playing music and majoring in music composition in college, I honestly cannot tell you why this cycle moves in 4ths other than to give the music theory student something easy to understand. (As a side note, if anyone knows why this is the case, please tell me; I would love to know!)

Now that we are in the key of F, let’s start building an F Major Scale:

• F (the root note)
• One whole step from F is G
• One whole step from G is A…

So far, so good, right? When we move one half step up to the next note from A, we have a choice of either A# or Bb. Which do we choose? Both notes sound the same, right? The best way I can explain this is that we already have an “A” note in the scale, so for the sake of avoiding unnecessary confusion, we want to use the Bb note name instead, giving us:

F  G  A  Bb

• From the Bb we can move up another whole step to get C.
• From C, another whole step to D.
• Another whole step to E
• And one more half step brings us back to F… back to the beginning but an octave higher.

Put it all together and you get: F  G  A  Bb  C  D  E (F)  – the F Major Scale!

You should continue this exercise through the rest of the key signatures on your own. I’ll give you one more example because I’m such a generous person:

Ab Major = Ab  Bb  C  Db  Eb  F  G

Just in case you need a little push, here is the entire key cycle in 4ths starting from C:

C   F   Bb   Eb   Ab   Db   Gb   B   E   A   D   G

The process of determining the notes of each major key is very easy once you get used to it, and after a eventually you will automatically know that the key of E Major has four sharps, the key of Bb Major has two flats, etc.

Consistency Helps

After you’ve spent some time with the major keys, you should begin to notice that the order sharps and flats appear in each key is constant. As you move through each key, the order of sharps and flats get added to consistently each time. The order of these sharps and flats (also collectively known as “accidentals”) are:

• Sharps – F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#
• Flats – Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb,

Some interesting things to note:

1. The order of sharps moves in intervals of a fifth.
2. The order of flats moves in intervals of a fourth.
3. The order of both sharps and flats are exactly reversed. Turn the order of sharps around (just for the sake of comparison) and you’ll see that it’s the same exact order as flats.

The ordering of sharps and flats is something you should just memorize. In the long run it makes things MUCH easier to have this information ingrained in your head so you don’t have to think about it while you are playing. I don’t know of an easier way to internalize the order, so just cram it into your brain however you can (consistent practice always works) until you don’t have to think about them anymore.

Putting It on Paper

To identify the key signature of a composition to its performers, the composer writes the number of sharps or flats at the beginning of the piece of music, after the clef and before the time signature, on every staff. For now I have to presume that you know what a music staff looks like and how it works. (If not, please take a look at xxxxxx.) The key of C Major has no sharps or flats, therefore no accidentals appear on the staff at the beginning of the composition. In this case the music staff looks like this:

The key of F Major (one flat – Bb) would look like this:

The key of Bb Major (two flats – Bb and Eb) would look like this:

Here is the complete list (which I hope you tried to figure out on your own, cheaters!):

Luckily, there are a few tricks that make understanding the key signatures easier:

• When looking at a key signature that has “sharp” notes in it, the key signature of the song is one half step above the last sharp that appears on the staff. For example, the key signature with four sharps in it (going in order – F#, C#, G#, D#) would be E Major; one half step up from the last sharp, D#, is E. Make sense? Similarly, the key signature with six sharps in it (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#) would be F# Major. Since E# is enharmonically the same as the note F, the appropriate choice for the next note one half step up would be F#.
• When looking at a key signature that has “flat” notes in it, the key signature of the song is based on the NEXT TO LAST flatted note – the penultimate note for the word nerds out there. As an example, if you take the key signature of 4 flats (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db), look at the second to last flatted note – in this case Ab – and that is the key signature – Ab Major.

Believe me, it might seem like an awful lot to learn, but once you break it down there are only a few components that need to be learned and they are really quite simple to retain once you understand the concepts.

A Minor Issue

I know what you’re saying… “Hey Josh, that’s great, but what about those minor keys I also hear about?”

Ahh, yes… minor keys. Minor keys are very easy now that you have an understanding of the major keys. Minor keys and Major keys are related to each other; that’s why you will sometimes hear them referred to as a “relative minor” or “relative major” key. The best way I can describe minor keys is to get you to start from a major key and move down a minor third (on the guitar this relates to moving up or down three frets). So if you start on “F” for example, and move down three half steps you get the note D. Therefore, D minor and F Major are relative to each other. They both have the same notes in them (D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C). The only difference is that in the key of F Major you use F as the tonal center for your composition, whereas in D Minor (the saddest of all keys, really…) you use D as the tonal center.

If you want to find the relative major key of a minor key, just move UP four ½ steps. The relative major key of B minor is D Major (two sharps – F# and C#). Remember that you will always move down a minor third from a major key to get its relative minor, and you will always move up a minor third from a minor key to get its relative major key.

That’s the long and (not so) short of it. I hope I haven’t confused you guys too much. Look for plenty more articles to come. As always, comments/criticisms/questions and suggestions for future articles are certainly welcome.

Enjoy!

Music Theory Lesson: Key Signatures is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

I know many, many people that aren’t interested in learning music theory; they don’t care what notes are in a CMaj7 chord so long as they know how to play the shape on the guitar. To those people I say simply, “You’re missing out.” There’s certainly nothing wrong with not knowing music theory – several very famous guitar players never learned to read music – but if you put in the time, the rewards will come back to you tenfold.

We’re going to start off very simple, with a look at the most fundamental aspect of music – the music staff:

Exciting, isn’t it? Basically, a music staff is nothing more than five evenly-spaced horizontal lines. Can’t get much simpler than that. Notice that the five lines also create four spaces, one space in between each set of two adjacent lines. Remember this; it becomes important in a minute.

Before we can get into how the lines function, we need to first determine what kind of staff it is. Staff type is determined by which “clef” is used. There are four commonly-used staves:

For the sake of this article we’ll use the treble clef, but I will explain the other three later as well so you are well-rounded. (Just think of the conversations you can start when buying the lovely lady a drink at the bar.)

In order for the musicians to know that they are dealing with the treble clef, you put it at the very beginning of the staff:

Now that you (and the musician) knows that you are dealing with the treble clef, it’s easy to explain where the notes are supposed to go. Starting at the bottom, the first (bottom) line is the note “E”:

Moving up from the first “E” note, we put a note in the first space. This is the note “F”:

Moving up from there, we have “G”:

I don’t think I need to go through all of the notes, do I? Good… if you go through them yourself – which you certainly should – you’ll realize that the top line of the staff is the note “F.” The cool thing is that the notes don’t really stop there. You can put notes above the staff. For example, the space above the top line (“F”) is the note G:

Go up another step from there and you have the note “A.” The problem is that without a guide it would be very hard to stick a bunch of notes in the space above the staff and have the musicians figure out which pitch the note is. Back in the day the guys were really smart, however, and came up with a way to make this much easier; they created lines and spaces above the staff. For example:

This is the note "A"

The note “B” above this would be:

You can continue this upward for a while. Be aware, however, that each instrument has its own range. Certain instruments can only reach up so high (or low). You have to keep this in mind when writing music; certain instruments (and even certain players) won’t be able to hit certain notes.

Moving down the staff, you can have notes go below the staff. For example, the lowest note on the guitar is an E, which looks like this:

You can follow the notes down from the “F” we started with (first line of the staff) to the low E note I just showed you.

Now, at the beginning of the article I also showed you four different clef types. I think now is a good time to show you how the other three work. Most likely you’ll see the bass clef most often after the treble clef. Here it is again in case you forgot:

The bass clef is also called the “F clef.” Why is that you ask? Well… do you see the two small dots? Those dots straddle the line that, as it pertains to the bass clef, is the note “F.” In essence the two dots of the “F” clef pretty much tell you where the note “F” is. (Too bad the treble clef doesn’t do this too, right?)

Using the same principle as we did with the treble clef, you can figure out what the notes are if you keep in mind that the fourth line from the bottom (straddled by the two dots) is the note “F.”

The alto and baritone clefs are slightly similar. Here is the alto clef:

See the number three looking thing? If you look closely, you’ll see that the middle line is where the two loops of the clef meet. Do you see it? In the alto clef, that middle line is the note “C.” If you look at the baritone clef (see the graphic at the beginning of the article), the same principle of finding the “C” note applies, but this time it’s the fourth line from the bottom.

You probably won’t use the alto or baritone clefs much at all, unless you are deeply into classical music. But you should know about them nonetheless.

That’s about it, Fretheads. It’s quite straight-forward. You should now be able to recognize what the music staff is and how it functions, and with a little practice you should be able to pick out the notes quickly.

Enjoy!

Music Theory Lesson: The Music Staff is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.