Beginner Guitar Theory

In music, no matter what instrument you play there are only 12 notes to choose from, these notes are given names from the first 7 letters of the alphabet: A through to G (known as natural notes).
Now you maybe asking..there are only seven letters but you say there are 12 notes. Well this is true and i shall explain why further along.

The six strings on the guitar running from thickest to thinnest are played openly (without fingers on the fretboard) are given a name from these letters, and they are also given number to tell you which string you should pluck.

The name of the note played and the number of the string running from thickest to thinnest are illustrated below:

E - 6th string (thickest)
A - 5th string
D - 4th string
G - 3rd string
B - 2nd string
E - 1st string (thinnest)

As you can see the the thinnest string is called the 1st string, and the numbers go up as you increase in thickness. You must memorize this as this is very important and you will come across it often.

Now that we have the open strings out of the way, we shall talk about tones and semitones which are a fundamental part of playing any instrument.

If the 6th string (the thickest) is an E note, what do you think the note will be called if you placed a finger on the first fret on that string? You guessed it... an F.
That is a semitone... when we talk about semitones and tones, we are talking about the distance between one note and the next.
if you placed a finger on the 3rd fret of the 6th string, you will get the note G.. this is a tone.

The difference between a tone and a semitone is fret distance. A semitone, is ONE fret difference between a note, and a tone is TWO frets apart.

It does not matter what direction you go in, if you started at F and go down one semitone, you will arrive at E. If you start at G and move down one tone you will arrive at F. The point is, and what you should remember is that:

A tone = 2 frets distance, in any direction.
A semitone = 1 Fret distance in any direction.

Octaves
What is an octave? without them music would be very boring. an octave is the same note at a higher pitch. If you had a scale (more on that in a tick) you could repeat the scale over and over again using the same notes.
For example. The C major scale consists of the notes

C D E F G A B C which is a one octave scale...if you simply repeat the notes, you will have a two octace scale, example:

C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C

there are three C notes here, which means the difference between the first C and the last C is Two octaves.

For a more audible idea, try this.. grab your guitar and play a note on the third fret on the 6th string... listen to it. Now try playing a note on the fifth fret on the 4th string... You will notice that it sounds the same except higher in pitch. In this case the octave is G.

The chromatic scale

Another important concept is the Chromatic scale. Firstly what is a scale? A scale is a series of notes played one after the other through certain tones and semitones. There are many MANY scales you can learn.. but there is trick to that as well ;)

A chromatic scale moves up through one semitone at a time, it uses sharps and flats. A sharp note is depicted by a # symbol and a flat note is depicted by a b symbol. Sharps and flats are known as accidentals. When you sharpen a note you raise it by one semitone, if you flatten a note you lower it by one semitone.

Every note has an accidental associated with it aside from a couple of exceptions.
The notes B and E cannot be sharpened to an accidental note, and the notes C and F cannot be flattened to an accidental.

Confused? so am i..but i will carry on anyway... keep reading, it will all make sense soon.

Here is an example of the ascending A chromatic scale

A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A

And a descending A chromatic scale

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

as you can see, if you are moving up in increments of semitones you get a chromatic scale, A to A# is a semitone, A# to B is a semitone B to C is a semitone etc...

going the other way (descending) Ab to A is semitone, G to Ab is a semitone, and on it goes.

To summarize:

-You cant have an accidental note sharpened for B and E, nor can you have a flattened note for C and F.
- Sharpening a note moves it up a semitone.
-Flattening a note moves it down a semitone.

What this means is that every note can really have two names depending on the direction you are traveling.
This is called enharmonic notes. Lets try a few examples.

A# = Bb
C# = Db
D# = Eb
F# = Gb
G# = Ab

7 natural note (a through g) + 5 enharmonic notes = 12 notes.

Take a look at the diagram below, to help you understand this concept.

Now we come once again to scales.
The major scale is the mother of all scales. You will need to learn this, or at the very least how to construct them to further your musical goals.
Everything you learn from this point onwards will probably almost fall back to the major scale itself. It is used by many as a starting point for learning many different concepts of music theory.

A Major scale is what is known as a diatonic scale. This means the scale has 7 notes, 8 if you include the octave.

A major scale is produce by the following formula:

Tone, Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone, Tone, Semitone.

Lets take a C Chromatic ascending scale and a c major scale and compare them both, I have chosen C because C is the only scale that does not use any accidental notes.

C Chromatic:
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C

C Major
C D E F G A B C

Counting up from c using the above formula of tones and semitones you will get the C major scale, lets break it down.

C to D (tone) D to E (tone) E to F (semitone) F to G (tone) G to A (tone) A to B (tone) B to C (semitone)

using this formula you can construct any major scale from any note...
lets try another more example. this time we will will try the key of A

A chromatic scale
A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A

A major scale.
A B C# D E F# G# A

A to B (tone) B to C# (tone) C# to D (semitone) D to E (tone) E to F# (tone) F# to G # (tone) G# to A (semitone)

Try working out the following major scales and try to follow the formula.
Major scale of D
major scale of G

it may help to write out the CHROMATIC scale first if you have difficulty.

Below is a diagram of a C major scale fingering pattern starting on the fifth string. Play one finger for each note. This pattern is MOVEABLE. which means that you can play this exact same pattern anywhere on the fretboard, and you will play in different keys.
For example, playing on the 3rd fret fifth string will play c major. playing the pattern on the 5th fret 5th string will play the D major scale. Moving the shape up to the 6th fret will play the D#(or Eb) major scale.

Finding out which key a song is in requires some fundamental knowledge of key signatures and an understanding of relative major and minor concepts. In this section, I will attempt to explain to you what these are and how you can use this knowledge to determine which key a piece of music is written in.

If someone says to you "This song is written in C major" or "This piece of music is written in G minor" - What does that really mean?
In a nutshell, they are basically telling you that the music in question is centered around certain notes.

If you listen carefully to a song on the radio, you will often notice that the song always comes back to a particular chord. This is whats known as the tonal center and this is what keys are all about.

To explain this we need to delve into a little music theory (Pay attention in the back there!)

If you can recall, Major scales are made up of a series of intervals (distances between one note and the next) Specifically

Tone, Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone, Tone, Semitone.

and that every major scale follows this same pattern. If you wrote out the first 5 Major scales starting at C in order of the number of sharps that each scale has, you would get this pattern:

C G D A E

To illustrate further and more clearly...

C Major
C D E F G A B C 0 Sharps

G Major
G A B C D E F# G 1 Sharp

D Major
D E F# G A B C# D 2 Sharps

A Major
A B C# D E F# G# A 3 Sharps

E Major
E F# G# A B C# D# E 4 Sharps

B Major
B C# D# E F# G# A# B 5 Sharps

can you see a pattern here? From the C scale you count 5 up to G then the 7th note of the G scale (which is an F) has been raised by a semitone, meaning that the G scale has exactly the same notes as the C scale EXCEPT for the 7th note which is raised by half a step.

Moving on from G - Count up 5
You get the D scale and according to the rule, the D scale will have exactly the same notes as the G scale EXCEPT for the 7th note which is raised a semitone, thus the D major scale is

D E F# G A B C# D

And so on and so forth. This is actually called the circle of fifths, and is essential that you memorize in order for you to know about what key a song is played in.

Now you may have noticed that I have only gone up to the key of B, this is because when you go past B you will get to a key that has two names, F# or Gb - and its a tricky little devil that even the most ardent musos like to avoid. Feel free to workout how many sharps F# has using the above formula.

Continuing....

The circle of fourths is used to tell how many notes in the major scale have been flattened (lowered by a semitone), whereas the circle of fifths is used to tell which notes have been sharpened(raised by a semitone)

Lets start at C again.

C D E F G A B C

now instead of counting up 5 we will count up 4 instead - this time you will get to F

We know that the F major scale is F G A Bb C D E F.

The rule here is : every time you count up 4, then THAT major scales fourth degree will contain all the notes as the previous scale EXCEPT the fourth degree which is lowered by a semitone.

If that didnt confuse you, perhaps a further illustration may help.

C major
C D E F G A B C 0 flats

Count up 4....

F G A Bb C D E F 1 flat *contains the notes of the C major scale except for the 4th note(B) which is lowered by a semitone

count up 4 again

Bb C D Eb F G A Bb 2 flats

and again

Eb F G Ab Bb C Db Eb 3 flats

Ab Bb C Db Eb F Gb Ab 4 flats

Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C Db 5 flats

Take a look at the diagram below, which represents a summary of everything I have talked about here. You will notice that starting at any key and moving to the right you will be adding a sharp to the seventh degree of the scale. Moving to the left will flatten the fourth note of the scale.

In the above diagram you will notice that inside the circle there are keys that are marked as minor keys. What IS a minor key? You may have heard that minor keys sound sad or melancholy whereas major keys sound bright and happy, and although this as a rule is often true, its not always the case. A classic example is yesterday by the beatles, which is written in a major key yet sounds distinctly sad.

This section will explain what minor keys are and how they are related to major keys.

The first thing you should know is that every major key has a relative minor key, and every minor key has a relative major key.

Minor scales, like major scales have a distinct tone and semitone formula. The formula for minor scales is

Tone, Semitone,Tone,Tone,Semitone,Tone,Tone.

Thus if we wanted to work out a minor scale for any key all we would have to do is apply this formula to the corresponding chromatic scale.
Time for an example

A Chromatic scale
A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A

A Minor scale
A B C D E F G A

using the above formula for any chromatic scale will produce the minor scale (more specifically called the natural minor scale).

In the example above we have used the A chromatic scale to produce the A minor scale. Notice that the A minor scale does not have any sharps or flats. This means that the A minor scale is relative to the C major scale, as C major also does not have any sharps or flats.

Every key in music has a relative, determined by the amount of sharps and flats in its scale. Perhaps another example is in order.

G Major scale
G A B C D E F# G

E Minor scale
E F# G A B C D E

here we can see that the G major scale has only one sharp and that the E minor scale also has one sharp. Looking at the circle above you can see this illustrated.

The best way to learn this is to actually write out all the scales and see it for yourself. Here is a simple exercise you can try.

First write out chromatic scale, first ascending then descending.

Write out all the major scales using the tone, semitone formula for major scales.

Then write out all the minor scales using the tone, semitone formula for minor scales.

Next using the circle of fifth chart compare which major and minor scales have the same amount of sharps or flats.

Each match will be the relative of the scale

Doing this will prove to you how this system works, all the while helping you to memorize scales, and believe me this will come in handy in the long run)

Another way of finding out what the relative scale is to a particular scale is to use this rule:

If you want to find out the relative minor of a major scale, the 6th degree of the major scale will be the 1st degree of the minor scale

D major scale
D E F# G A B C# D
The 6th degree is B therefore:

B Minor scale
B C# D E F# G A B is the relative minor

If you want to find out the relative major of a minor scale. the 3rd degree of the minor scale will be the 1st degree of the major scale

E minor scale
E F# G A B C D E
The 3rd degree is G therefore:

G Major scale
G A B C D E F# G is the relative minor

I am glad you asked!

Understanding how many sharps or flats a scale has tells you something about the key a song is in. When you are handed a sheet of music you will see that just after the clef there is something called a key signature. The key signature tells the performer which notes will be sharpened or flattened while being played. It also tells you what key the music is in. it does this by marking one of the lines on the staff with either a sharp or flat, thus determine the scale that piece of music is centered around.

Study the example below. If you dont know how to read music yet, watch this space as I will be writing a lesson on the basics soon.