Guitar Theory For Dummies Cheat Sheet
Click here to understand how Music Theory for Guitarists is different from music theory for piano , and how this affects you. We designed MusicTheoryForGuitar.com and all our music theory guitar articles, lessons and resources to give you exactly what you want and need. Now you can learn music theory for guitar in a fun, easy-to-understand, and complete way. Music theory lessons, advice and resources for guitar that will actually show you how to apply what you learn to real life guitar playing. They don't show you how to apply music theory to actual guitar playing. In other words, there is a disconnect between the music theory concepts they attempt to explain and the real music that you want to play or create.
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.
Plus, it’s important to understand intervals as they are a foundational concept of music theory. You can think of the guitar fretboard as one big connected grid. It stands to reason that if the notes on the fretboard follow a given pattern, so too do the scales that are derived from these notes. This is important to understand because once you learn to recognize the patterns that make up a given scale, it gives you the freedom to play across the entire fretboard. Using what we already know about scales, the concept of tonality is something rather easy to grasp. While a scale is a selection of notes organised into a specific order, a key is just those notes in their unorganised form.
This meant I got really good at music theory, and when I ended up studying music at university, I found the theory papers easy. I’d do a class test in 20 minutes knowing I’d aced it, and leave my classmates for another hour, drawing piano keyboards and charts on their test paper, struggling to finish in time. I didn’t have to work out the answers to the questions by using a chart or drawing a piano keyboard on the page. I’d been doing music for over 10 years, and during that time Guitar I’d become familiar with the language to the point where I didn’t have to think about it. Aside from passing tests at uni, the other advantage of knowing music theory this thoroughly is that you can actually begin to use it in your playing.
On the 4th string the patterns change a bit more to compensate for the tuning of the 3rd string. Still, you should see the similarities between these patterns and the previous. Another way to easily visualize this, is to look at a piano keyboard. Within an octave on the piano, you'll notice that there are two spots that have two white keys right next to each other.
And yet, we all know guitarists that have the best rig in the world and still have a bad tone. The fact is that regarding tone, the player comes before the instrument. Click here to see how you can get a great guitar tone by spending nothing and only changing the way you play and approach the instrument. A real idea of what aspects of music theory are the most useful things for you to learn right now and in your guitar playing future. Now that the pattern begins on a G, you’ll get a G major scale. Notice that although the pattern remains the same, the notes have changed.
Once you get to the last position , the patterns repeat themselves, starting again with the pattern of position 1. Of importance to note is that these patterns are all connected to the position above and below by shared notes. You can form a C major scale, D major scale, etc. all by using this same pattern. A whole step on the guitar is equal to two frets while a half step is equal to one fret.