In the previous chords post we learned about seventh chords. Today we are going to add even more notes on top to create extended chords.
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Category: Theory
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Chord Theory 2: Seventh Chords
In the last chord families post we looked at every possible three note combination of stacked major and minor thirds. Today we’re going to look at each of the four note combinations.
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Chord Theory 1: Basic Triads
Many guitar students know a few open chords and the ‘basic’ barre chord shapes, but get discouraged from furthering their chord vocabulary due to off-putting nomenclature (Gb7#9b13 anybody?) and immense (not to mention mostly useless) chord dictionaries with ‘10,000 Chords You Must Know’ – just where is the student supposed to start? And what is a ‘sus’ chord, an ‘augmented’ or a ‘diminished’ chord, anyway?
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Intervals and Scale Degrees
Today I’m taking a break from the modes series and writing a post on intervals and scale degrees. Although intervals are kind of ‘boring’ as far as theory goes (not ‘cool’ like modes or fancy jazz harmony) they do form the basis of everything in Western music. They are some of the fundamental stepping stones to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the music we play and love (I’ll get back to fun modes stuff next week 😉 ).
In Part 2 we begin applying every thing that we have learned so far to the guitar neck.
In this post we learn about the musical alphabet and the sharps and flats. This post focuses around the notes on a piano, because it is easiest to visualise what’s being discussed – but you don’t need to understand the piano to make sense of this post. Once you have a basic understanding of the musical alphabet we start applying the notes to the fretboard in Finding the Notes: Part 2‘.
The CAGED system is a convenient way of thinking about chord and scale shapes. It makes it easy to link positions together and create larger scale patterns and alternative chord voicings.
I’ve been working on a few up-coming posts about rhythm reading – and I’ve been using the Lilypond music engraver to prepare the notation. In doing so I’ve also discovered how to create blank manuscript and blank TAB paper. I also grabbed out the old templates I’ve been using to create my chord charts.
Diagrams are an easy way to visualise where to put your fingers when learning chords or scales.
In this article, we have a look at the benefits and drawbacks of using TAB instead of standard notation. It looks at how TAB can be a great help to beginning guitarists, but possibly a hindrance for greater guitar development.