Channel: New Secret Guitar Teacher

Category: Music

Tags: harmonyinterval numbersharmonic dimensionmelodic dimensionsecret guitar teacherchords in keysnick minnionchords and scales explainedrootsecretguitarteacherfifthsnumbers in musicguitar music theoryguitar tutorialroman numerals in musiclearning guitarroot noteguitar scalesmusic theorythirdsmelodyintervalschords explainedharmonising scalesmusic theory tutorial

Description: Music is two-dimensional: in music we deal with the melodic and the harmonic dimensions. In this episode, Nick gives a brief introduction to how 🎸chords and scales interract with each other to form the foundations of musical construction. Catch up with the previous lessons here! youtu.be/Y857EfuxCyE -- Find hundreds more lessons, videos and tutorials at the Secret Guitar Teacher site! Sign up now for a free 30 day trial secretguitarteacher.com -- Abridged Script We are now entering the area of music theory that I consider to be the very heart of the subject. Music is two-dimensional. What do we mean by that? Well a nice simple explanation is to say that: in music we deal with how notes sound when we hear them played one after another – that’s the melodic dimension of music. But we also deal with how notes sound when we play two or more of them at the same time and we call that the harmonic dimension of music. Let’s look a little closer at the fundamental raw materials that musicians work with when creating melody and harmony. Often, the first building block from the melodic dimension that we encounter is a scale. For example, the C Major scale. In standard notation it looks like this.. And as guitarists we are very likely to be familiar with the main building block used in the harmonic dimension – chords. From the last lesson in this series we know that chords can be created by selecting notes from the Major scale according to the formula for any given chord type. So, for example this familiar chord shape C Major is create using the formula 135 – selecting the first third and fifth notes from the C Major scale and effectively piling them on one on top of another like this. And already here you can begin to see the two dimensions we are discussing. In standard notation the melodic dimension is shown horizontally and the harmonic dimension vertically. In the process we call Harmonizing the Major scale, we bring these two building blocks together by building chords on each step of the scale… Notice that although all these chords look similar at first glance, they are in fact a mixture of three different types of chords: The first fourth and fifth chords are Major; the second, third and sixth are minor and the seventh is a diminished chord. Also notice that as we switch from numbering the notes of the scale to numbering the chords of the key, I change from using Arabic numerals to Roman. Not everyone makes this distinction in the numerals, but I find it helps keep clarity between numbering the notes in the scale and numbering the chords in the key. The actual process of harmonizing is fully explained on the Secret Guitar Teacher’s Guitar Music Course and you are shown through step by step examples in several different keys until you gain the confidence to apply this process yourself to any key. The obvious and immediate benefit of learning this process is to become familiar with exactly which chords are native to each key you play in. But there are several less obvious pay-offs from studying music theory at this level as well. One of them is that it enables you to develop a great short-cut method of remembering the chords of any given song. From this point onwards, you will no longer need to think of chords by their individual names as you will begin to gain appreciation of how each chord functions its key. This means that you remember chords by their numeral rather than by their name. So rather than thinking of this as G Em C D you perceive it as a I VI IV V sequence. One great advantage of this is that you can instantly transpose the sequence to another key like C, A, D, F# or Bb. And this understanding of chord/scale relationships will also help you work out songs by ear. Nearly all the riffs, licks, melodies and solos you hear are based on these fundamental chord/scale relationships. So a working grasp of them helps you make educated guesses about what other musicians play. But, for me the greatest benefit of studying this level of music theory comes simply from taking the mystery out of how music is constructed. It is at this point in your climb up the pyramid of Guitar Music theory that you begin to realise that you are making the transition from being ‘someone who plays a bit of guitar’ to being a fully-fledged ‘musician’.Un In the next lesson in this series, we will take a brief look at the subject of cadences – this is about how songwriters use chords to structure the flow of a song. I look forward to seeing you for that.