Transcripts
1. Introduction: Guitar theory and practice, C major chord analysis in open position C major
scale with worksheet is a project based course
focused intensely on the open position C major chord constructed from
the C major scale, utilizing a very
flexible worksheet, which you can download
Once you understand the concepts of this course and have downloaded
the worksheet, both of them can be applied then to other chords
and other scales. The adjusted worksheet will
serve as the final project.
2. Open Chord - C Major Scale – C Major Chord Fingering: Guitar and Excel open chord, C major scale, C major
chord fingering. Get ready and don't fret because it's just a board
with strings on it. And Excel will show
us how it works. Here we are in Excel. If you don't have access to
this workbook, that's okay. Because we basically built
this from a blank worksheet, but we started in a
prior presentation. So if you want to construct
this from a blank worksheet, you may want to
begin back there. However, you don't
necessarily need the workbook if looking at this from a music theory standpoint, because we will simply use it as a tool to map out the fretboard, give us the scale, as well as the related chord that
we're focused in on. If you do have this workbook, there's three tabs down below, Example OG and the
Open Chords tab. The OG tab representing the worksheet we put
together in a prior section, that now being our
starting point, the Example tab represents
us copying over that OG tab and making
the adjustments to it. And then the Open
Chords tab represents the worksheet that we copied over in a prior presentation. And we'll be continuing
on at this point in time. Quick recap of what
we did last time, we had the OG tab. This gives us our fret
board two times over. It gives us all the notes
in the musical alphabet, the related numbers,
and then our scale. And then we have our
worksheet that are mapping out the scale
and the chords. Then we copy that
over so that we can hide a lot of information and
focus on a specific area. We hit a lot of the fretboard, so we can just see the zero to three frets on the fretboard, because we're focusing
in on the open positions of the key of C. We then
also hit some cells here so that we can see this
worksheet which gives us our scale and it gives us the
cord that we're working on, which is going to be the
key of C right here. That's going to be
our point of focus. Now then we color
coded the information on the fret board so that we
can see the root is green. The third is going
to be the red, and then the fifth is
going to be in the yellow. Then we went down and
we copied this over. And we added the green notes, which are going to be
the pentatonic scale. We copied it down,
added the blue notes, which are the major scale, and then we put both
of those together, which is kind of chaotic. We'll talk about that stuff
in a future presentation. Right now, we want to look
mainly just at the fingering, so we'll talk future
presentations about more of the
intervals and whatnot. But right now, we
just want to look at the fingering
positions and see how we can play with
the different types of fingering positions. Remember that we're looking
at the C major scale. These are the notes
in the scale 1234567. And then when we look
at each of those notes, we can build a chord on it. The first chord being built
is going to be the C major. And we're looking at
just three note chords. That's the foundation of chords. Generally we're looking
at the major chord, which is going to be a C, E, and a G. Now we'll talk more about the intervals and whatnot
in a future presentation, because that'll help us to
map it out on the fret board. But right now, we just
need to know, well, I can just find each
of those notes here. And if I'm holding down
each of those notes, then I am, in essence, playing a C. Now, note that you might have
this thing in your head that you have to play a
particular shape to play a C. Or you might have
something in your head saying that the C needs
to be the lowest note, or it's not a C, but it doesn't necessarily need to be the lowest note to
still see it as a C. You can have
basically inversions, and on the guitar you have a little bit less flexibility than you might have on a piano. More flexibility than you might have on other instruments. So oftentimes when you're playing the guitar,
you're basically saying, where can I get some kind of voicing of this chord, right? I'm not worried so much about the different kind of
inversions and being able to play every different
kind of inversion, because I'm trying to
worry about what I have available to me in a particular position
on the fret board. All right, so that being said, if I look at this,
the standard C, I'm going to use these little things down here is going to be here and here, that's where our fingers
are going to go. And then you were ringing out the open positions
here and here. So if we pulled out the trust, the trusty guitar here, it's going to look
something like this, right? So that's going to be
our finger in position. Now, obviously you
could strum out this fingering position and it's pretty comfortable
fingering position. But if you've never
played before, because it naturally aligns
to your fingers grip, so it's a pretty comfortable
position for most people. But if you've never
played it before, it's going to feel really weird, just like anything, any position you'll
play on the guitar. So you just want to
keep on practice. Putting the fingers down on it. Noting that when you do this, there's different things you can practice as you're working
on your finger in. One is just going to be just
laying your fingers down on the guitar and the
other is going to be looking at the notes
and where the shape is. And if you know the shape,
you'll be able to move it up. As we'll talk about in
future presentations, this right here is the main root that you would be
thinking that's going to be the lowest note
here and it is the root. Notice that this one up top, I don't currently, we're
not holding it down. You could play it open
because then you'd have an E, that
would be an open. But then the lowest note is
an E. It's still a C cord, even though the lowest
note would be ringing out. But if you want to keep
the lowest note as a C, which makes it really is, then you can mute that. I usually mute it with my thumb. But you can mute it
like this as well. So you want to practice
muting with your finger poking up here so that that
string doesn't play out. And notice that I
usually do a lot of stuff with my
thumb over the neck. And I like to mute these
top two strings like that, which isn't as much a
classical guitar component. A lot of times if you put
your thumb behind the neck, then you have a more
reach with your fingers. But when I strum with a pick, that also makes it harder
for me to mute strings. Sometimes I find so if
you do finger style, that's not a problem as
much because then can you don't have to hit those
strings with your finger. So then it might be more
better to put your thumb behind so you can kind of practice how your muting
style is going to be. And then you can try to wring
each of these out, right? I should be able to
ring each of these out. And then you can practice just the grip once you
can ring everything out. When you put your fingers, if this is a new fingering, it's always useful to try
to put it down in order. So I would put the
pointer finger down, the middle finger, and
then the ring finger, and then take it off
and put it back down. And then take it off
and put it back down. And you could do that while
watching TV or something, and you could just
keep on doing that. You don't even
have to play, just putting that finger position in position the major, the normal fingering that would
be used most of the time. Now note that it's also common to hold this
one down as well. This up top, that's a really useful finger position because that makes it a
little bit more movable. Because when I get to the moving stuff,
we'll do that later. You can see this
whole thing moves. And the only open strings
are this one and this one, which you can easily mute. You want to mute those strings is quite common to
hold it this way. You'll note when you do
that, then you have the, some people might call that
on top of C or something like that because the lowest note
is a G. But it's still, if you look at it from the
standpoint of a C chord, because it has the
notes of a C in it, then you can practice
playing in that position. There's actually
a lot you can do just with this
fingering as well, because once you have
that position down, you'll note that
we're in the key of C. That means that all of the open strings will be okay to play in the key
of C that we're in. So you could start practicing
lifting up some fingers. So if I was playing
like this and you're strumming and you lift
up this ring finger, then you have an open note. So what would happen? I mean, what does that look like if
I'm going to take this off? If I remove this,
let's make this one, this is my point of focus. Let's make this a
different color. Let's make it
green. I'm going to say this is going to be
an outline of green. If I take my finger
off of this one, then I've revealed this note which is a D. And you can say, well, the D is not in here. That's true, but it happens
to be the nine, right? So we'll talk about things outside of the key in
future presentations. But just note when you're
kind of just messing around, all of the open
strings are okay, So you can kind of apegiate, meaning you hit
them one at a time. You can pick around in it, you can lift a finger up in it, and it, and then put
that finger back down. And any of the fingers
that you lift up, that would be
generally okay, Right? You can lift this finger up. And you could say,
okay, I'm going to pull that finger up and play. And so then if I pull that finger up, I'm
revealing the B. Well, the B isn't in here, but it happens to be the seven, which we'll talk about later. But if you're just
playing, if just looking at this
position, you're like, okay, I'm going to lift that finger up and see
if that sounds cool. With what I'm playing, it
should fit because it's in the key of C. And we'll talk about the intervals
a little bit later. But you could start to a peg and put that in place as well, when you're kind of
just practicing. Your fingering positions,
There's going to be that one, If you're just
holding down this, you might notice that
this one here is another. You could, of course, put
your finger down there so I could be playing this and I could put my
finger down there. I could pick up even the
root if I wanted to, and then put my
finger down there. I might not be
playing a C anymore, but I'm playing
like the shape of the C and I'm ringing
things out that are, that are going to be okay in the major chord,
there's that one. And then of course,
this one up top means that I can put
my finger up here. And I can practice putting
my finger up there and then revealing
the E if I want. And then putting my finger down, I can reveal the E.
Meaning I don't mute it. I don't mute it. With my
thumb or this finger. I play the E on top. When I'm jamming around, I
can try to play with that. You have a whole lot of variance just with this
fingering position. What I do a lot of times is you don't even need to play
the whole position, right? Then the next thing you
might want to do is take this thing apart a bit and say, well, what if I just
played like two notes? Because this is
the root of the C? Because if you play
just those two notes, you've got the one and
you've got the three. You've got the one
and the three. And then if I reveal this one, I'm going back to an which, it's not in the C, but I know all the notes are okay
in the open position. Because I'm playing
in the key of C, I like to do some kind of
rhythm stuff just with these two notes where you
could muting everything. I'm muting this with my thumb. I'm muting with this finger
at the bottom of this finger. And then you could just
do some rhythm stuff. You can just put your
finger on and off. And you can do a lot of
stuff with just that and then play the whole chord if you want to give it the
more full body. But don't feel like you
can't just take pieces of this cord together
as well and just play pieces of it as well. Then when you're thinking
about the whole chord, we could say, well, what are the other shapes
that we can do here? We'll notice if I play
these three up top, then that in and of
itself is a C chord. I don't need all of the chords. I don't need all six
strings to ring out. It's cool if I can get all
six strings to ring out, because then you've got
a really bold chord. But you don't really always
need a really bold chord, especially if you're playing
on top of something else. Right? A lot of times you don't want the boldest of
chords because you're trying to play with something else on top of it or
something like that. So really you only need three
notes to make the chord, so it's really useful to
have different voicings. Now this voicing is
a very heavy voicing because it's inverted
with the G is on top. But you can still see it as
a chord because you have the and the E. So you have
all the notes in a C cord. So you can start playing
this one, right? And you can put that now if I ring all this stuff
out down here, If I play these three, and I keep this open, I can
try to mute that. I can mute that
with this finger. This finger can mute
it a bit, okay? I can just try to
play those top three. And I can mute the bottom
string with my palm. But if I do play it
out, it's kind, okay, because this is going to be
a G that's going to play out that's, that's the fifth. And then you'll have a that'll
ring out that's the seven. Because again, all
the open notes work as long as you're
playing in the open position. But that little bit right there is something
that is movable. It's something that
we can see that because we don't have
any open things in it. It's an easily movable position. But note it's also a
little heavier as well, so if you're playing with
some other band or something, playing the top or heavy
strings can be a little bit hard on it because you're trying to mix in with
what other people are doing. And that's going to be a
heavier kind of sound. You could do just
these three down here. So I could say, now I've got this one and this one is
going to ring out open. That's going to be this. Now this is something you're
probably not going to do as much in the open position
because you're like, well, why wouldn't I put this finger down right
here and play this? But all you really need
are these three notes. You still have the C.
Now the reason this is useful as well is that notice that those three
notes are movable. Because I don't have
any open notes. So when we get into moving, that position becomes useful
because I can move it up and I don't have the
open notes that I'm going to have to mute and
stuff to get in the way. And then of course you
note that down here. If I play it this way, I can just hold the C
down and I get that one. So right, that's the
bottom of my C, right? So if I play my C like
this, and I just, but I just play
these three notes, that's still just
a C down there. Now, again, you're
probably not going to do that all the time
in open position, although it could
be useful again if you're playing on
top of something else. Because you have the
lighter strings down here, which aren't going
to be as heavy if you're playing over
something else. That as you can see it, if you go to your D position, it looks kind of
like a D. And that's another movable position because
there's no open strings. So when we start to try to
move these positions up, that could be a useful position when you're jamming around. You can play the open position, You can lift up fingers. You can play different rhythms, and then you can play
different variants of this. You can always lift up
fingers because it should be okay to play in the
open positions here. Different arpeggiating
and you can practice just getting your fingers in
that particular position. Now let's try to
think about, well, what if we moved this up just to see what
would happen if I just think about
this as a shape. And I moved that shape up, notice the shape could move
up to the 145 most easily. Let me do a quick check on that. I'm going to unhide some cells. Put in my cursor on D, and then over to K, right click, and I'm going to hide. Then I'm going to scroll
all the way down to the bottom where we have
another tab open here. Now let's say I'm
going to select, actually let's hide to 12. This time I'm going
to go up top. And I'm going to go from M over to our worksheet over here, right click and hide. Now I'm going to say I, I
want to look at the four. The four, because that's
going to be another major. It's often useful to play the 145 together because those
are the three majors. So let's build out. It's going to be
the same worksheet, but now I'm going to
take a look at it from the four note. So I'm going to select
this whole thing and I'm going to go to the
Insert tab up top, we'll insert Home Tab
conditional formatting. I want to make it equal to and I'm going to pick
up this one and I'm, let's, that's the
green this time. And then I'm going to say okay. And then conditional
formatting and I'm going to say this is going to
be equal to this one, I'll keep that as red. Then another one, conditional
formatting this one, and I'm going to
make that yellow. Okay, there we have it. Now if I copy this and put it here, I'm going to
say, all right, there's our position That's
basically moving up, right? Then if I do it down
here and I say, okay, now I want to
do the same thing, but I'm, I'm going to look at the five and
do the same thing. Let me color code this one too. I'm say this is now the
format paint, the green one. This is going to be
format, this one. This is to be the
format paint one. Then let's do the same
thing with this one. On the five, I'm going to say home tab
conditional formatting, I got to highlight it first. Conditional formatting
is equal to, this time. I'm going to pick up this
one and make it the green. And then I'm going to say okay. And then conditional
formatting equal to this one, I'm going to make it
red, that's not red. The conditional
formatting this one, let's make that the yellow. Okay, Let's do this. I'm going to format,
paint this one. And then take this format, paint this one, and
format paint this one. And then I'll copy this. We'll put that here, we can see. The position. Again, I'm going to hide everything
above this one. Let's hide all the
stuff up to this one. Right click and hide. Okay, now we hold on a sec. I hit too much,
let's try it again. I undid that and
then I want to here. And then right
click and he okay. So now if I go up top, I'm going to say this is
the open position with the C and so we have that
could be held like this. And then I'm looking at this
note because that's what I see as the root when
I'm envisioning this. And I'm going to move it
all the way up to here, which is the eighth fret. So I'm going to say up to here, so 12345678, I'm on
the eighth fret, that happens to be now an F. So now notice that
this same shape, which is pretty much
universally called a C shape, is now a C shape because it's
a C shape in open position. But now, if I was
to strump this, I would be playing an now
notice the problems that you have when I move this up here that I'm only holding down now. The fingers here,
here, and here. Which means that I can't really out I could ring
out the open and the open, because again, if I'm
playing this four chord, and I'm still playing
in the key of the notes will still
ring out and sound okay. But the octave will be lower, a lot lower compared to where
my relative position is. So when you move this up, generally if you play the same
position, it still works. But now you just need
to mute the strings. So I'm going to mute
the top string, either with my thumb or with
the point of this finger. And then I'm going
to mute this string with the flat of this finger. And then the bottom string
is muted with my palm. So that means like if
you're a finger stylist, that might not matter as much. But if you're just going
crazy with the pig, you can still play that
out and it's fine. Now also note that these two, I don't, I only have
the one and the three. I don't have the fifth, which in this case is
the C. When I'm playing relative to the F. That's okay. It still sounds good, right? Because you're still
really playing a pretty heavy sounding thing, and which we'll
talk about later. We've got the third, which is the differentiating factor
between a major and a minor, and you've got two of
the roots played over. So that's fine to play even though you're kind of
missing the other note. But if you wanted to pick it
up it would be right here. So if you augmented that
a little bit, right, then I can play like this and that's when we'll get
into like that, right? And then you can play
it like that way. And we'll talk more
about that later. But for right now, just
note that you can move that shape from here when you're just kind of
jamming around and like, okay, I can move it
up to here and just mute everything and
that'll still sound cool. And then when I go down here, we can do the same thing, but now we're moving
it up to the fifth. And so I'm still
looking at that finger, I'm looking up to where
it's going to be a G. Which happens on the, what is that? The tenth fret. So
1-234-567-8910, right? So now you can play
this one up here. And you could start to move between that position, the 145, and you'll start to
see that they're symmetrical positions
because you're playing all of the major notes. And do the same thing
and mute the strings. And then you can go from
here to here to here. Now you could do the same
thing with the top notes. So if you're playing just this, copy and paste this, Then again, that's
going to be right here. Right now I'm playing just this and that's
also movable, right? So I can play and that's playing the entire
thing right there. I can move that up. To the eighth, I'm
still kind of looking at this string because
that's my root. So when I'm saying
in the key of C, and I'm moving up to the four, which is going to
be, I'm going to move from here to here. And then I could
still play that, and I can kind of mute
the strings underneath, or at least one string
underneath with this finger. And if you wanted to mute, you could mute, like
with your pinky, so that you could still go
crazy play everything out, and not having those
other ones ring out. But again, if you did
have them ring out, it might sound okay even though they're not in the
same register so much. But they should be in the
same key because you're still kind of playing in the
key of C. And then again, you can move that
shape up to here, which would be on
the tenth fret. So you could go and you
could play it up here, You can move that shape around, and if you're
working in the 145, it becomes a movable shape. Now you can also
see this shape down here is a movable shape. If you're playing down here,
that's going to be shape. You can't really see it right
here because you're not fingering the other two. But if you move that, if you move that full
shape up to here, then there's your shape. So we'll talk more about that moving of the positions later. But I just want to
mention it now. Because if you're new to
learning the C shape, you want to learn
it as the C shape, because everybody does. But just remember that as long as you're playing
a major chord, you're going to have the same
relative positions up top, which will be great
for reference points. Then you can augment or
change a little bit. You change your finger
positioning so that the open strings you can accommodate for
the open strings. When you move your fingers up, you don't have to move
everything up the same. I used to think that,
like I'd have to move everything up and I have
to play it correctly. Meaning all the fingers need to be hitting the same strings. No, you could play
whatever you want. You can play just two
strings of the position. I can move just this
up if I wanted to, that will move up
relative to the 145. I could play just
these two strings. That'll move up
relative to the 145, and that would be fine. Next time we'll see how
this is going to fit into the pentatonic scale. So that we can pick around
in the pentatonic scale and move back and forth from it
as well with the major scale. Let's unhide some
cells before I stop. Let's unhide the,
then then I'll go back down to where we were so that we have our
same starting point. Next time I'm going to right
click and hide all of this, and now we're back to
where we started, I think.
3. Open Chord - C Major Scale – C Major Chord & Related Scale: Guitar and Excel Open Chords, C major scale, C major
chord, and related scale. Get ready and don't fret. Remember the board's fretted so you don't have to be
Here we are in Excel. If you don't have access to
this workbook, that's okay. Because we basically built
this from a blank worksheet, but we started in a
prior presentation. So if you want to construct
this from a blank worksheet, you may want to
begin back there. However, you don't
necessarily need this workbook if looking at this from a music theory standpoint, because we will simply be using it to map
out the fretboard, give us the scale and related chords that
we're focused in on. If you do have access
to this workbook, there's three tabs down below, example OG and the open chords. Let's go to the OG tab. This is the worksheet we put
together in a prior section. It now being our starting point, we will typically copy over from this worksheet and
then make adjustments to it so we don't mess up
the original worksheet. The example tab represents some of the adjustments
that we will make to it. Kind of the answer key
after we adjust the OG and the open chords tab
is the tab that we copied over from the OG tab in a prior presentation and are now continuing to
work on at this time. Quick recap of what we did
in the prior presentation. We went to the OG, the
entire fret board over here, and we want to minimize
much of the fret board, so we can focus in
on one component of the fret board and then
see it side by side. As we can see here with our scale and the related
chord that we're working on. We minimized it down to just
zero to fret number three. And we put it side by
side with our worksheet, which gives us the
scale down to here. Here's notes one through seven, and it gives us the related chords that we're going
to be working on. And we're starting
with the first chord of the C major scale, which is a C major chord, which has the three
notes in it to make a C major scale of C, E, and G. We color coded those, mapped them out on the fret
board in this open position, and discussed the
different ways that we can basically
finger this position. The primary way, of
course, being this way. But we also noted that we could grab something up here, right? And we could grab it like this. So I can grab this one. And then I would still say, let's copy this, right? Click and copy and paste. And then I would
still have this one. I can do that, or I can grab just these three if I
wanted to do it that way. So any combination where I
have these three notes in, it will give me
that C major scale, whether or not I'm ringing
out all six strings or not. All right, I could just grab that one right there and just ring out these
three, for example. So now what we want to do is map this on top of the
pentatonic scale. So this is the related
pentatonic scale. In the key of C
in this position. We have the same
fingering like this, but now we added
some green notes, which is a little confusing. These greens are different
than that green. I hope that's not too confusing, but these are the added notes. So we have these two.
This one and this one. Those are going to be
the added notes on top. Now note that you could start to look at this pentatonic scale. You can look at
this and say, okay, let me just start playing
the pentatonic scale, but we'll do that more later. So we'll focus in on
the pentatonic scale itself at a future point. What we want to do at
this time is just see how this C position is inside
of the pentatonic scale. That gives us a few more options if we're just kind
of noodling around. When I say noodling around, we saw before that we
can just strum this, I can start picking
up some fingers and see how that sounds, because the open notes
should always work. And now we have a
few other notes that we can basically pick up. These two we already probably
were noodling around with before because we said that all the open notes
basically work. So if you're holding
this position down, then you can pick your
fingers up and you're revealing these open notes
and that's going to work. We'll talk about why it works
in future presentations, but you could see all those
notes are in the scale, so you could see them over here. And that's basically
why it works. So you can also pick
this one up down here. So if I was playing
this position, I can pick up this right
here with my pinky finger. And you could see
that's in the scale. So that should be
something that works. And then you can start playing
this if you wanted to and focusing on particular
components. So if I was to play the C
and then let's say jump up and then focus on these two notes and try to
play something in between. Sometimes it's useful
some simple strumming just like two down strokes on a C and then start
noodling around up here. Right? I'm just
adding those two. I can double stop it. You taking those two notes
at the same time? And just play around
with adding into your strumming patterns and just seeing that those are
available to you. And notice what I'm doing is I'm focusing in on these two and
I'm letting go and saying, okay, the open strings are fine, so I should be able
to play that as well. You could do the same down here and you could focus
on these two. So I can start looking
at those two strings. So I could be, I'm just noodling around in between some simple
strumming pattern. And again, you could obviously do this all the way through and focus in on those
specific items. And then what you're
learning is you're picking up part of the pentatonic scale that's around this in basically
more of a natural way. And then we'll pick it up more technically in a
future presentation. Now you can do the same
thing with the major, if I was to copy this down
and paste it down here. Now I'm just going to copy this whole thing and move
it down on the major. The major looks
somewhat chaotic. It's basically the same
thing as the pentatonic, but now we have all
seven notes in here. And note that the
pentatonic scale is usually something
that's a little bit safer when you're switching
around from chords to chords. Or if you're playing on
top of something else. It's useful to
have the pentonic. But obviously the major scales gives you a few more options. They all fit within each other, and again, you can
do the same thing. Now you have the
added blue notes. And you could do the same
thing and start to focus. You could actually look at this, I would call this position four, I'll talk about that later. Of the major or
pentatonic position, you could call it a C, C position when you're talking about the
pentatonic positions, which we'll talk
about more later. And you could start to memorize. You could play up and
down just the scale. But again, for right now, I'm
just trying to say, okay, what's available to me
if I was just picking around in the area. So now I can see
up top, I can see. Okay. So now I've got my
C here, I've got the G, and then I've got another B that I can play around with,
so I can do that. I might focus in
on these because I've got this nice
little square here, boom, boom, boom, boom. So that means I've
got the open nose, so you could see
this little square. These two, and these two. That's pretty easy to
kind of play with. So, so you could do a strumming
little picking thing, that's the kind of dissonancy
way to play it with this two like that gives
you a lot more attention, but you can do a whole lot
of stuff just focusing in on particular points
in this pattern. And then start to understand each part of the fret board as you're focusing in on
one piece at a time. That would be the, my general strategy that
I'm recommending here. And then if I copy
this down here, once you can see this position, then you can try to fit these together
in terms of what is actually going on with the
major and minor scales. You can see this represents
the chord that we're playing. And then on top of that, the green notes represent
the added pentatonic notes, and the blue notes
represent the notes that are on top or added
to the pentatonic. If you're looking at this,
you can actually think of the blue notes as the base.
They're at the bottom. And then on top of that we put the pentatonic,
which are the green, which are going to cover
up some of the blue notes, because the green notes are within or inside
of the blue notes, which are the major scale. And then the ones that are these colors we put
on top of that, which is going to cover
up the green notes that already covered up
some of the blue notes, because the actual chord fits on top of the pentatonic scale, which fits into the major scale. We'll talk more
about that later. But just conceptually,
that might be interesting. Now also, you might
be thinking, well, what happens if I move this shape up to
the 4.5 Because we talk, that could be an
easy thing to start playing with if you're
just strumming around. I can move this full
shape or some part of it to the 145 because those
are the major chords. Well, you have to kind of be a little bit careful
when you're thinking about what's going
to be around it. Because if you move
up to the 145, like if I move this
position from the C, I use the open position, but now I'm up here playing an F. Then
you could think about that as though you're
switching entirely from the C scale to the
F. And in that case, all the other relative scale
positions would follow you. And you can play the
relative scale positions after you move up
the fret board. And that's fine to
do or you can think of it as you're still
in the key of C, but now you moved up to an, which means that
you're going to have different related
notes around it. So let me just map that out. We'll talk more
about that later. But let's think about it
a little bit more here. I'm going to Unhide D
K click and unhide, let's go down, for
example, to this one. Let's hide from the 12th. Fret over to our
information here, right click and hide. Now we moved up to the fifth. Now the fifth. If I
move the shape up here, you could say, okay, all I have to do is
move this shape up. I see my shape right there. And I can finger my shape,
so that looks good. Now, you could finger
it and try to pick this up, finger it
different ways. But if I just use
that same shape and I just play
these three notes, or picking this one up to, then I could just
move that exact shape up like we talked about before. So I can be playing this shape and I can move it all
the way up to ten. And I can play it here, and I can pick it up here. And then I'd be playing,
this is my root. Now this is the C shape. That would be my
root going up here. So you might be thinking,
well, what about the relative or related notes? That note, well, if I'm thinking of myself
still in the key of C, but now I'm moving up here. I can play the related C notes, which means you're going
to have a different set of notes around it. Or again, I can think of it as me switching completely from the C to the G. Let's pretend
we're still in the C here. So let's select this
entire thing and say, okay, if I select
this entire thing, and I'm going to go to
my formatting and say, we're going to say
this is equal to, we have a actually,
what do we have? We don't have a. Let's go to
a C. I'm going to make that blue custom formatting and
fill and I'll make that blue. Then I'm going to say, okay. And then I'm going
to go another one. This equals, and then a D, we already have an
E, we don't have. Let's make an custom
formatting, making it blue. Okay, let's go to another one and do custom
formatting we don't have yet, so I'm going to make that blue. Custom formatting blue. Okay. Let's drop this down a
little bit more then. Let's do custom formatting. We have the at, let's do that one and say okay and then okay and then
the B we already have. If I look at this one, I'm going to say copy
paste. Let's make some. If we're fingering, say this, which is our normal C
position that we moved up. I relate that to the position that we
would have back here, which would be here,
here, and here. You could see the shape around this one is
not going to be exactly the same when you're looking at the full major scale, because now I'm putting
the cords around it that are still in the key of C. I'm just playing the G chord, which fits in the key of
C. So in other words, what I'm trying to say
is that you can't play the symmetrical shapes if
you're thinking about moving up up here and still
playing the notes around it that are kind of
in the key of C. However, if you think
about going up here and switching entirely from the
key of C to the key of G, then the related shapes, pentatonic and major
will be the same. They'll be symmetrical.
And that'll sound good if you're
switching the whole thing up. By the way, these two
might look similar to you. So let me just map it out
a little bit more clearly. If we look at this
first position, we've got this one, this one and this one over here. We still have the same
relative positions mapped out. But if you look down on
the next string down, you've got here, here, and here versus here, here, and here, you have a
difference of positions here. And then here, here, here
versus here, here, here. So same positions,
but here and here, you only have those two versus
a different position here. So they're not exactly the same. To show that, I'm
going to adjust this worksheet on the right
to be in the key of G as opposed to the key of
C. So we can map out this information on the
fret board in the key of G. So I'm going to Unhide from L K to do this right click
and Unhide I'm going to Unhide 153-169 right click and Unhide I'm going to go to my key over here
in number format, change the key
number from a four, which is a C, to
an 11, which is A. Unfortunately, it's
not mapping out over here because I have
absolute references. So I'm going to change
them. If this is too technical, you
can fast forward. But I'll show you
what I'm doing here. We're going to say this
equals to the x look up tab. And I'm going to pick up this
number plus this number. And I want this
number to be able to move down when we go down, but not to the right when I
copy to the right, therefore, I'm going to put $1 sign before the letters,
but not the numbers. And I'm going to say
plus this number. That one I wanted to be able to move to the
right but not down, therefore dollar sign
before the number, not the letter and
the lookup array. I wanted to look up that number, which will be a
one in this case. And the scale
relative positions. And I'm going to make that
absolute because I don't want those arrays to
move as I copy them. And then the return array, I wanted to give us the numbers that are representing the notes. And then four on the
keyboard, closing it up. Let's copy that across and see if it does what
we think it should. We'll copy that then down here, I have to change this one too, because it also has the
absolute reference. This equals the lookup tab. I'm just going to pick
up this note up top. I want it to move as I copy it, both down and to the right, so no absolute look up array. I wanted to find it over here
in our control shift down. And then absolute
F four on those. And then the return array, I wanted to give us the
one with the number and the letter control shift
F four on the keyboard. And then closing it up. Hopefully I've got
that correct now. I can copy this across
and copy this down. Okay, hopefully that's correct. We're going to
trust it right now. And then I'm going
to hide from 12 over to my scales over there
or my worksheet. Hide that. Then now you can see I have
the G in my first position, so I'm going to say, okay, now let's make it a little smaller so we
can see everything. Let's just map this out
in the key of G. So I'll map out these notes rather
than in the key of C, right? If I select this entire thing, this entire thing
from here on out. And then I go into the layout and I say this
is going to be equal to, and I'm going to be picking up, let's put this up here. This one, and I'm going
to make that custom blue. Okay? Okay. And then, boom. Equal to this one, I'm going to make that
custom fill blue. Okay? Okay? And then
equal to this one, making that custom fill blue. Okay? Okay? Equal to this one making
that custom fill blue. Okay? Okay? Equal to this one making that
custom fill blue. Okay? Okay? And then equal to this one making
that custom fill blue. Okay? Okay? Equal to this one making that
custom fill blue. Okay? Okay? And then I'll put on top of it
these three because now I'm going to be mapping
out the one note which is now a G instead
of a C. I'm going to say, let's make this this note, and I'm going to
make that green. That's now our root. And then I'm going to say,
let's make this to be the red, the third, then this
one is this note, which I'll make yellow. There we have it.
Then I can say, let's format format paint here and format paint to here. Now you can see when I move
up to this position up top, that the relative position
will move up, right? So this whole relative
position should be the same as the relative
position we had here, right? This information here. Let's
hide from here to here, right click and hide
scrolling down a bit. So now we've got
this whole piece. When I was in the open position and I'm going to
put this over here. And then we were fingering, and that would be in the key of C. Let's
take this out entirely. And then if I finger this down here, we
would be in the key of. Now we would be
fingering like these. You can see the whole relative
position is the same. The point is that
if you're noodling around and you're saying, okay, I'm going to be moving
this C position up to this position. Then the next thing is, well, can I then noodle around in the same relative
shape? You can. But just realize that
when all the notes may not then be in the key of C, you've basically switched. You want to switch in
your mind that now you've actually switched all the way
to the key of the next key, in this case the key of
G. Now I was playing all the notes and
you can do that in the song, but just
note your switch. The other way you can do it, it would still sound good, is that you can move up here and you can play
all the notes that are still in the key of C
around these three notes. Which happen also to
fit in the key of C, which means that the
whole relative shape around it will not fit. It's just those notes will fit. But then when you
noodle around it, you'll be playing the notes that are still in the key of C, as opposed to the notes
which are in the key of G, which will have some
different notes. So that's just a
point now that we can practice when you're kind of noodling around and
you're thinking, okay, I can noodle around here, I can use all the open chords and then I can move
this thing up. I'm still in the key of C,
although I'm playing a G, because the whole
G chord fits in the key of C. What about
those other notes? Again, you can use the
symmetrical position, but then you're kind of
switching the scales. But you could totally do that, just it's useful to
keep in your mind that now you've
switched the scale. All right, so we'll play
more technically next time and start looking at the
numbers in the intervals.
4. Open Chord - C Major Scale – C Major Chord & Intervals: Guitar and Excel Open
chords, C major scale, C major chord and intervals get ready because it's time for
our guitar skills to excel. Here we are in Excel. If you don't have access to
this workbook, that's okay. Because we basically built
this from a blank worksheet, but we started in a
prior presentation. So if you want to construct
this from a blank worksheet, you might want to
begin back there. However, you don't
necessarily need access to this workbook when viewing this from a music theory standpoint, because we will simply use it as a tool to map
out the fretboard, give us the scale and related
chords we're focused in on. If you do have access
to this workbook, three tabs down below, example OG and Open Chords tab. The OG tab in orange
representing the worksheet we constructed in a prior section and which is now
our starting point, which we will copy
over and adjust. The Example tab representing the end adjustments
to this worksheet. The Open Chords tab representing the
adjustments we have made in prior presentations and will continue to use at
this point in time. Quick recap of what we
have done thus far. We went to the OG tab. We got our fretboard over here, we copied it over, and then hid a bunch of sales. So we're focusing in on
just a small part of the fretboard where the open
chord positions are at. And then we also hit it. So we can see this worksheet
given us our scale, the C major scale. And the C major chord is
what we're focused in on. We then used our
conditional formatting to map out on this piece
of the fret board, the three notes in the C major. And we thought about different
ways that we can basically play that chord
in this position. We also thought about it
in terms of what if we overlay that on top
of the pentatonic? What if we overlay it on
top of the major scale? What we want to do
now is get into a little bit more of the
theory side of things. And this is something
I would typically do or I generally do do
like in the mornings, when my mind is working a little bit like 15
minutes at a time, try to think about the
music theory of it. And that usually
gives you some ideas to kind of noodle around with. So in the evening,
possibly after work, when you don't want
to think about all the different theory stuff, you can just kind of noodle
around in the evenings. I think that's a technique
that kind of works for me. So also note that when
you get into like the intervals and the
different numbering systems, it's going to get confusing no matter which way
you look at it. And many people look
at it their own way, they basically almost
have to come up with your own kind of system
that makes sense to you so that you can keep all these things in your
mind and separate meaning. You're using different
number patterns for different things and
you've got to find some way to separate those
things in your mind. Also note that when you watch other people do
this kind of thing, they're trying to map this stuff out in a way that
makes sense to them. We often have a tendency to say, well, that's not the
best way to do it, that's no good, but what
you really want to do, and I tend to do
that often as well. But generally it'd
be best if you can actually see this stuff
from different angles. So if someone else sees it
a little bit differently, then it would be best to try to see it the way they see it. Not only so that you can
communicate with them, but I think the basic
definition of understanding something is to be able to
see it from different angles. So the more different
angles that you can kind of explain this
stuff to yourself, in your mind, that
means you have more neural connections
between these things. And that means by definition, I think that you
understand it better. Okay, so let me
first lay out what I mean about some of
the confusing factors here that we actually numbered
all of our notes here. And this will be really helpful with the intervals
because you can use some simple math
as we'll see shortly. So we did that, I would call
them absolute numbering. And I'm going to go
to the OG tab over here just to remember
what we did to do that. We listed out the entire
musical alphabet, which isn't just A through, but it also has the
sharps and flats in it. So there's actually 12 notes
in the musical alphabet, A through G sharp. Now, if you just
number those notes, then it becomes a lot easier to be able to count up or down. So if I can memorize that A is a one absolute one,
it doesn't change. I'm just saying it is a one, A sharp, or B flat. I'm just going to name that note because it's the
same note tone wise, is a two, and then A B is
a three. A C is a four. A C sharp, or D flat is a five, and so on and so forth. If you can do that up to 12, notice that you have a lot
more flexibility to be able to count up and down the
entire musical alphabet. In other words, it's
difficult for me to count and say the musical alphabet
because I can't sing it. I can't say A sharp or B flat B. C sharp flat, D sharp, right? It becomes difficult, and when
I try to say it backwards, D flat C, B, it
becomes difficult. If you have numbers 12, 345-665-4321 you can easily say them backwards and forwards. So I think it's really useful to actually memorize the
absolute number of. Of the notes. And that'll help you with the intervals as well. So that's what we have here. When I say this is a four, I mean it's absolute
number four according to the musical alphabet, not in relation to the scale. Now we're also going to call it the one note of the scale. Well, what does that
mean? Well, remember how we constructed the scale. If I go back to the
musical alphabet here, we constructed the scale by basically doing our
whole whole half step. So if I said this was a four, then we constructed the
scale taking two notes up, two notes up, one note
up, two notes up, two notes up, two
notes up, one note up. Or in other words, who half, whole, whole, whole half. When we're looking at
the relative notes, we're not using all the notes
in the musical alphabet. So now we're starting
and I'm taking this C, which I'm calling an
absolute number four if you just numbered them
from the musical alphabet and saying it is now
relative position one relative to
the C major scale. So when I look at this
number one, it's relative. So I'm going to keep reminding
myself of that in my mind, this is a relative position, one relative to the fact that I'm starting on
the C major scale. And the C major
scale doesn't have all the notes of the
musical alphabet in it. It only has seven
of the notes out of the 12 notes in
the musical alphabet. Now these numbers over here are the same one through
seven of the scale, but they give us that added ability to
see the upper case. And those are the ones
that happen to construct a major versus the
lower case a minor. And the dot is
representing a diminished, which we're not going
to get into a lot of detail now. Okay. And then you have the
interval numbers. When I, I construct that
was just three notes, we said that that's
a, it's a ENG. How did we construct
that? Well, if you see it in a circle, I think it's easier to
kind of see in a circle. Sometimes we said this is
the one, here's the two, here's the three,
here's the four, here's the five, here's
the six, here's the seven. If I start at a one, we have the C. And
then we skipped the D and went to the E. And
there's our three. It's the three. This is
the one note of the scale. This is the three.
Let's do it this way. This is the three of the scale, which is also here, right? The three note of the scale. And then this is the
fifth of the scale, meaning we skipped
from here to here. Now we've got the fifth here, which you could see is the
fifth note of the scale. And that's how we constructed the first three
notes of our chord. Notice that works here
because we're actually in the KefC and we're looking at the first chord
in the key OfC. But just remember that
if I go to this one, how did I construct this one? This is going to
be like a D minor. And so how did I construct that? Well, I started here, I'm still using
my C major scale, and then I just did
the same thing. I skipped every other
note, and we went to here, which is an F, and then
we went to here is an A. So here's the D. F. A
constructed the same way, but I'm not going to call that as though it started on the two, even though I did construct
it from the C major scale. We're going to say that when
we talk about the chords, it's in relation to its scale as if the one note of the
D is the one of the scale. If I was to map
out what does the 135 mean when I'm looking
at the two chord, which in this case
is the D minor. Let's look at a D minor
over here. I'd have to go. Let's go to the OG tab. I'm going to change my
key here to be a six, which is a D. And then it starts off
with the major scale, but I'm not in the major scale. It's going to be
the minor scale. And we'll talk about
why that isn't a case. But here's the D minor. Now you can see
the 135 is the DF. Now it makes sense because
it's the 135, right? The 135 of its scale. So if I go over
here, that's the D. So even though we constructed
it from the key of C, we're just
constructing something that is built from
its own scale, right? So that's what that
numbering means, that's why that gets a
little bit confusing. And then you can say,
okay, well what happens? And we'll talk more
about this later. Like if I go over here, I have the seven, that makes sense. That's the seven over
here on the one. But what about this
nine? How can it be a nine when there's
only seven notes in? The scale. That's basically, you can see here, you're like, hey, that looks like
a two and it is, it's a two, but you're
not going to call it a two because we're using our pattern of skipping
every other note. That means we skipped
every other note to here, we skipped every
other note to here. We skipped every other note
to here to get to the seven. And then we skipped this
note to pick this one up, which is actually the nine. We're going to call
it the nine in our pattern of skip
every other note. We'll talk more
about that later. And this one, of
course, would be the 11 of skipping every other note. So you can see that these notes are actually the ones that
we skipped last time, that D, we skipped last time. This one, that is the one
we skipped last time. But we're trying to put it in the pattern of skipping
every other note, because that is the heart
of the major chord. And the reason you do
that is because when you play the ones that are
right next to each other, they have a little too much
dissonance between them. They're too close together
to kind of sound good, so you can still play them, but they're not like the core. The core of the music is
usually these three notes. The first three. Okay,
so that being said, then we can start to
kind of map this out. Our positions over here. And I would do this first
with our worksheet and then to try to finger it
without the worksheet. And be able to list
it in your mind just like 15 minutes in
the morning and just say, what does this chord mean? Can I map it out in my head? And then you can
see the relative relationship between the chords. Let's think about it.
I'm going to say, okay, this first one. Let's do this. I'll
put this one on top. Let's, I'm going to cut
this, what did I do? I keep on doing that. I'm
going to try to put it on top. So I'm going to cut
it and paste it. So now it's on top, so I can put it on
top of this one. Okay, so that's the one we're focused in on, that's the root. The first thing I'll
try to do is list what my fingers are on
according to the 135, because everything
that I'm holding down here is going to be one
of these three notes. And I can list
which one they are. Am I playing the one,
the three, or the five? So if I'm looking
at this position, this first note right
here is the one which is the C. This note right here
is going to be the third. Now it's useful to differentiate the third because there's going to be a different
third when you're talking about the majors
versus the minor. So I'm going to call
this then a major third. And note that the major third, you'll start to
recognize the position. They'll be a major third down one string and back
one string typically. And then if I look
at this string, that's the open
string that we're not fingering but
is ringing out. And that's going to be the five. Notice if you moved
this position up, you might have to
finger it differently. I can imagine fingering
it like here. And then if I had to move my
finger to pick up that five, and that's why it's
a movable position because I've got the 135, so you can kind of imagine
that relative position here. And then if I, my
finger back here, I can look at this one. That's going to be this
finger on the string or the one closest to the
floor second to the bottom. And that's going to be another
root, that's another one. And then this one down
here is going to be, if I ring that out as an open, that's going to
be another three. My normal position here
of a C has two ones, and it's useful to know
where those two are, because then you can
start to think, well, I can remove one of
those if I wanted to. And I'd still basically be
playing a C. Maybe I remove, for example, this one, and I play this instead. I let that ring out. Now I'm playing the seven, but I still have the
three notes that I need, because this was a repeated C. And I can play something a
little bit more complex, but still in the range of a
C that we would be playing. So that's the one first kind of way that you
might map it out. Now you could change the positions as well and
start to think about, well, what if I played it like this and I just looked
at these three. Then I could say, that would be kind of like this. I could do the whole
thing like that, or I can play it like this. Just playing those three notes,
then what would that be? Well, now the root note is
not in the lowest position. My root note is here. That's important to note, because when I move it up, I want to follow that root note, because that's going to
tell me what the chord is. If I say that, then
I can say, well, this is still the one, which is where that C is, this
is still the one. And then this one up top, above it is the fifth. Notice that's an
important pattern to note if you're trying
to construct things. As you move up the fretboard, the fifth is above, there will be a fifth,
in other words, above it most of the time, except for the relationship
between these two strings. These two strings here, there's a different interval
between those two strings. But everywhere else
you're going to say, okay, if that's my root, the fifth, there's
a fifth above it, that's good to know. And then down here I
still have my third. So now this is going to
be the 51 and the three, so it's good to be
able to map that out. And then down here you could see if I just played
like these three, I could say, okay, well the root is the one I'm holding
down right here. And now you can see
that funny relationship between these two strings because you would
think above it, right above it, you
should have the fifth. But no, it's back one, It's back one here
to get the fifth because of that
funny relationship between these two strings. So now you can start to kind of visualize that
funny relationship, which is actually good
because that helps you to hold more fingers down, that helps you to have
more opportunities. And then down here you've got the E, and that's the third. So you can basically map
that out different ways. And then you could
basically say, well, what if I put my finger
down on this one, that's going to give
you another fifth. Which is nice to know, because if you move
this position up, then of course that
relative position should move up with it. Now the next thing
I'll do is I'll try to get technical on actually listing
out the intervals to get a better
understanding of this. And so I would basically hold
this down and say this is, this note right here is
the relative position one. And the reason I say
relative position is because it's relative to the scale of the root of the chord
that we're in, right? So it's relative to
the C major scale. In this case, this is going
to be a relative position, one of the C of a C.
And when I say C, I could just say C instead
of C major or minor. Because whether I'm talking
about major or minor, the one note is going to be the same and then I'll list it, which is a four note, four absolute number, note four, which is a C. Then
if I list this note, I'm going to say this is
relative position three. Meaning it's a relative
position three to the root. Now it's the third of
the related scale, which is here, relative
position three. I would also list out
its absolute distance. I'm going to say this is relative position
four note away, which you could see up top. And I'm also going to call
it a major third notice, I didn't call the first
note a major first. And the reason I don't
have to do that is because there's no difference between
the majors and the minors. But when I go to the third, there's a
differentiating factor, it's four notes away
to get to the third. When it's a major, it's only three notes
away when it's a minor. That's useful to kind
of repeat in your mind. So I'm going to say
this note is a four away major third of
note, right, of C. C is a four. If I add four
plus four, I get to 8.8. Is the absolute position. If I can remember
that eight is an, then I can get there
by just using my math. I could say, well, I went from
the absolute position of a four and then I added
four notes to it, because that's what it means
to be a major third away. Two whole steps,
which is four notes. And I could say four
plus four is eight. Then I can, then I can
say this one right here, I'm going to say this is a
seven away fifth of note four, which is C. So in other
words, the fifth, when I think about
it as a fifth, it's the fifth of the scale. So you can see it right here. It's the fifth of the scale, but it's actually
seven notes away. And note here, I
also don't have to say whether it be
major or minor, because the fifth,
unlike the third, is always the same
interval away. It's not five notes away. When you're talking about
all the notes in the scale, it's actually seven notes away. So we're saying it's a fifth, because it's the fifth
note in the scale, It's seven notes away, because that's how many notes
away it is from the root. In this case, the
root is a four. So if I added seven plus
47891011, I get to 11, which is a G. So if I just
number all of my notes, 1-12 then the G is an 11, and then you end at G sharp. So I would try to put my
fingers here and say, okay, this open string here is a
seven away fifth of note four, which is seven plus four or 11. And note number
11 is a G, right? And then I can go
down to this one. I'm going to say,
okay, this is once again the relative
position, one of Of a C, which is of
course, note four. And then I would go
down to this one and say this is going to be the relative position. Relative position
four note away. Major third of note
four, which is a C, which is four plus 44 plus four is going to be eight
absolute note position. Note number eight is An. And you can see by
mapping that out, you'll basically be
able to try to get all this differentiation
about what is a relative position versus it'll start to make more sense. So let's do that one more time. And of course, once
you do it this way, you can do it with
these notes as well. And you can finger it kind of this way and you can
figure it out again. So let me try to do that again without as much commentary. I'll just say, okay,
I'll put my fingers here and I'll try to do
this one thing at a time. And once I mapped it
out on my fret board, then I'll try to do it without
the fret board up top, without Excel, and just
try to think it out right. And I was just like, okay, that's going to be relative
position one of note four, which is a C, which is
of course note four, which is a C. This
note right here. The second one is going to be relative position
four notes away. Major third, it's
the major third, as opposed to the minor
third four notes away. As opposed to three
notes away of 4.4 plus four is 8.8 I know is an E. And then I would
go to this one and I'd say, okay, this note right
here is going to be relative position seven
away five of note four, which is a C. Four
plus seven is 11. And therefore, and
I know 11 is a G. And then I'd go to
this one and say, okay, I'm holding down this one. This is the relative
position one of note four, which is simply not four. And then I would go to
this one and say this is relative four away. Once again, another four
major third of note four, which is a C four
plus four is eight, and therefore that is
an E. And then again, you can do it this way, and I can hold these
three down and say, okay, what is that doing? Well, now on top what I have is a seven away fifth of note four, which is a C. Seven
plus four is 11. I know 11 is a G. And then below it I've got the
one and then the three. If you can start to
say that in your mind, I know that's quite tedious, but if you say
that in your mind, it'll start to get your mind wrapped around what
you're actually playing, which will give you some ideas. If you were to move things up where the relative
positions are, and if you do that like 15 minutes in the morning
or something like that, then it often gives you some
ideas to kind of noodle with in the evening where
you're not thinking as much. And then you're just kind
of saying, you know, does this work to my ear after
work, that kind of thing.
Robert Steele
