Music Theory 101 For Guitar

1. Intro: Hi, I'm Dave and welcome to this class on music theory for guitar. If you're a complete beginner when it comes to music theory, are you already know a few bits and pieces. This is going to be the perfect class for you. All you need to know beforehand is the names of the strings and a few basic parts of the guitar, and you'll be all good. This is good for complete beginners and will be a really great foundation for music theory. I recommend taking lots of notes here for this class and also possibly watching the videos multiple times because there is a lot of information even though this is the fundamentals and it can take a few repetitions to really ingrain the knowledge into your brain. So let's get started. 2. Why You Should Learn Music Theory: In this video, I'll be explaining why you should actually bother learning music theory. There are quite a few reasons. The first reason is that it will actually let you understand what you're playing when you're learning a song. Music theory knowledge will help you understand why the song sounds the way it does, and also help you learn it a lot quicker. This will also allow you to transfer elements from that song into your own music, which is really, really cool. Another great reason to learn music theory is that it will help you communicate with other musicians. Good music theory knowledge will save you tons of effort when trying to explain ideas to other musicians and will also make it a lot easier to understand when they're trying to explain things to you as well. Music theory will also allow you to become more creative. Now of course, you can write music without any knowledge of music theory. You can play around with the frets on the guitar and come up with a tune. But having that knowledge of music theory will make it so much easier to take what you have in your head and transfer it onto the guitar. Now, one important thing with music theory, a lot of people tend to see it as a lot of rules to follow and sort of a form of restriction. And this is really not the case. Hopefully, you've got a good understanding now of why it's really important to learn music theory. Let's jump into the first theoretical lesson. 3. The Musical Alphabet: Music is a language, and in any language, the first thing we learned is the alphabet. So in this video, we're gonna be learning the musical alphabet. Now in music, we don't have letters, we have notes. There are 12 notes in the musical alphabet. These notes represent a different sound or a different pitch. Pitch just means lower or higher like that. So each node represents a different pitch, and some are higher than others, some are lower than others. And we'll get to that in a moment. The notes themselves are actually named after the letters of the alphabet, which makes them quite easy to remember. So we've got the letters all the way from a through to g. There are 12 notes in the musical alphabet. And as you can see, there were seven letters here, a, B, C, D, E, F, and G. We have to fill some gaps in, in the middle. And I'll show you how we do that in a minute. We fill in the gaps with notes that are called sharps and flats. Shops mean higher than, flats mean lower than. A sharp is represented by what looks like a hashtag symbol. A flat is represented with what looks like a lowercase b. Let's go back to those seven notes we have for our musical alphabet, a, B, C, D, E, F, G. As we go through the alphabet, the notes get higher in pitch. So B is higher than a, C is higher than B, D is higher than a, F is higher than a, and G is high than f. Now we have to fill in the other five notes because there's only seven notes here. We've got 12 in total. So it looks like this. So if we go from a, the next note is called a sharp or B flat. The names are interchangeable. Sometimes you'll hear it called at a shop. Sometimes you'll hear it called a B flat. Then we go to B. So we've got a shop, B. Now there's nothing between the B and the C. So we go from B straight to see. Then from C, The next note is what is called C sharp or D flat. So that means it's higher than C, but lower than D. Then we're going to date. Then we go into D-sharp or E-flat. From there, we go to a. From a, we skip straight to F. There's nothing between E and F. Then from F will go into F sharp or G flat. And then from F sharp or G flat, we're going to J. And then from j we're going to G sharp or a flat from there. If you want to keep going, you just start the alphabet again. A, a sharp, B flat, B, C, C sharp, D E flat, D, D sharp, E flat, E, F, F sharp, G flat, g. Now, one, a little distinction to make the sharp and flat notes, for example, a sharp and B flat, they make the exact same sound even though there were two different names. The two different names are used in different musical situations by, as I said, the interchangeable and they represent the same sound. Another important thing to remember is there's nothing between the B and C, and nothing between the EMF. There's no B-sharp or C flat, except in some very advanced musical situations which you don't need to know about now. There's no E sharp or flat, okay, so we go straight from B2C, let me go straight from E to F. In the next lesson, I'm gonna be showing you how you can actually identify these notes on the fretboard. So any notes that you're playing, for example, this note, I know it is an F-sharp. This note, I know it's an F. This note here, it's a C-sharp. I'll show you how to identify those. But first of all, I want you to really memorize these 12 notes and our musical alphabet. I want you to be really, really solid with them before we move on, okay, so memorize them and only when you feel like you've completely memorized them. Can you move onto the next video? 4. Finding Notes On The Fretboard: In this video, I'll be showing you how to identify any note on the fret board. We've got frets on the fret board. Each subsequent fret represents the next note in the musical alphabet. So for example, let's start with the low Eastern. If you play the low E string without fretting anything, it's an inode because the strings called a, that's the name of the note that's being played. Then if we go to the next fret or the first fret, we're gonna play the next note in the musical alphabet. So that's what they think it is. That's right, F. Then from that, the next fret, second fret is gonna be the next note in the musical alphabet, so it's F sharp, or you could call it G flat. Then the next note, the third fret is going to be G. Then after that, the fourth fret is going to be G sharp or a flat. Then the next, the next fret number five is going to be the next node in the alphabet, which is a. Remember, once we've got two GIF sharp or a flat, we're at the end of the musical alphabet and we just repeat ourselves again on the next note. Okay, so we're playing a on the fifth fret. And then the next note is the sixth fret, which is a sharp or B flat. We've got beyond the seventh fret. See, on the eighth fret, remember nothing between B and a. C sharp or D flat on the ninth fret. Day, on the 10th fret, D sharp, or E flat on the 11th fret. Then on the 12th fret, we get B again. Okay, so something to note is that the 12th fret of every strength is the same note as what it would be played open. I've just shown you all notes on the low E string. The same thing applies for any other strings. So let's just take another string and do a few notes. Let's take the G string. For example. Let me play the G string. 11 were playing a G note. The first fret is the next note in the alphabet, which is G sharp or a flat. Off the bat, we're playing the next fret, second fret, which isn't a. Remember we're starting the alphabet again. Then the next note, the third fret, is a sharp or B flat. We can keep going. B, C, C sharp, D flat, D, D-sharp, and B flat, D, F sharp, or G flattened and G, It just keeps going as you continue across the fret board. Okay, here's a test. I want you to try and figure out what the note would be on the fifth fret of the B string. Okay, So pause the video, try and work out what the fifth fret of the B string would be. Then I'll tell you the answer in a second. So pause the video now. Hopefully you've unpause the video and you've got the answer. The answer to the fifth fret of the B string is eight. So let's take a look at how that works. Is the open string. C as the first fret. C sharp, or D flat is the second fret. D is the third fret. In E-flat is the fourth fret, and then the fifth fret. Okay, let's try a couple more. The seventh fret of the D string. Playing the seventh fret of the D string. I want you to pause the video in a second and then I'll tell you the answer once you've unpause the video, so pause the video now, okay, now you've unpause the video. The answer to the seventh fret of the D string is a. On the D string, we've got D, D-sharp, E-flat, F, F sharp, G flat, G, G sharp, a flat. The seventh fret is a. You're not going to memorize every single note on the fret board in a day. But there's a cool exercise that you can do to help you get a little bit faster at it. I like to use the circle of fifths. Now, completely. Don't try and understand what the circle of fifths is just yet. It's just a tool at the moment to help us memorize the notes on the fretboard. As you can see on the screen, we've got a big circle with a load of notes on it. We're going to take the first note C. What we're gonna do is try and find C on every single string on the guitar. Rule is that we're not going to go any higher than the 11th fret. The 11th fret is the highest fret we're allowed to use. For example, say on the low E string is the eighth fret. On the a string. It's the third frame. Of course, you're gonna have to work this out by going one at a time. I already know this, so I'm just quickly demonstrating for you. See is the 10th fret of the D string. C is the fifth fret of the G string. C is the first fret of the B string and sees the eighth fret of the high E string. Once you've worked out what C is on every single strength, then you can go to the next node in the circle of fifths, which is g. Find all the G's on the fretboard, so we've got that. Then the next note would be d, and you can find all the notes on the fretboard D. Then you work your way around the entire circle of fifths. That's gonna be quite tricky. It's gonna take a while, definitely going to take a long while the first time you do it. Okay. So you might want to break it into a few practice sessions. But as you get quicker, you'll be able to do the entire circle of fifths in just a few minutes. So keep practicing that. That will really, really help you understand the fret board and the notes on the fretboard a lot more. Next video is going to be on one of the most important aspects of music theory, and that's intervals. 5. Intervals: Okay, so now that we know the notes, we need to learn how the notes sort of relate to each other and they relate to each other using intervals. What is an interval? An interval is just how we measure the distance between two notes, okay? So a small interval would be something like this, where the notes are very close together and a large interval would be something like this. The notes are very far apart. Intervals can apply two notes that are played individually. Notes that are played at the same time. The interval is still the same. Whether we're playing them at the same time or individually, intervals are the building blocks of music. So it's absolutely essential that you really, really understand them. If you get a really good knowledge of intervals, this is really going to give you a great headstart in your music theory. Let's take a look at the intervals. There's 12 of them to remember. So let's get started. What we're gonna do is we're going to start with the note F. And we're gonna do all of our intervals from F, which is the first fret of the low E string. So if we play the first part of the low E string to the second fret of the low E string. We have an interval called a minor second. There we go. That's a minor second. Then if you fly from the first fret to the third fret, so that's a gap of two frets. We've got a major second, then the next gap, fret one, fret four. We're going to call that a minor third. And then the next gap, fret one, fret five, is called a major third. So far we've got minus second major, second, minor third, major third. Then if we play the next note from one to fret sixth, what we can do is we can take this fret sixth, the exact same notes on the first fret of the a string. So we're gonna play the first fret of the low E string to the first fret of the a string. That is what's called a perfect fourth. What we've got is from fret one of the low E string, fret of the a string. That is called a sharp forth, or you can also call it a flat fifth. Remember when I talked about sharps and flats, shops meant higher than Flaxman, lower than a case. A sharp fourth means it's higher than a fourth. Flat fifth means it's lower than a fifth. Obviously, the next interval is gonna be a fifth of some kind of case. So we're playing from fret, one of the lobby string, fret of the a string. And that's called a perfect fifth. Then we're playing from fret, one of the low E string, fret for the a string, and that's called a minor sixth. Then from there we're going fret one of the low E string to fret five of the a string. And that's called a major six. So let's just recap the ones on the a string for one fret, one is a perfect fourth. Fret, one to fret too. The sharp forth, or you can call a flat fifth fret, one fret three is a perfect fifth. Fret, wonderful at, for a minor sixth. Fret five is a major sick. Then what we're gonna do is move to the next string again. So we're gonna play from fret one of the low E string, fret, one of the D string. That is called a minor seventh. Minor seventh. And then the next fret, fret one of the low E string to fret of the D string. That's called a major seventh. And then finally, we've got fret one of the low E string to fret of the D string, that's called an octave. An octave is just the same note, but higher up. Okay, So F to a higher F is called an octave. So let's just quickly run through all of the intervals again, minor second, major, second, minor third. Major third. Perfect fourth. Sharp forth. You can call it a flat fifth. Perfect fifth, minus six. Major sixth, minor seventh. Major seventh. An octave. So the intervals are the same no matter where you stop them from. For example, let's take our major second interval from F, F to G fret one, fret three. That's a major second to fret gap. Now it doesn't matter wherever we play that. So for example, if we start on C, which is the eighth fret of the low E string, we go to D, which is a two fret gap that is also a major second. The same thing for any other interval. So if we play from F to C, That's fret one of the low E string to fret three of the a string. That's a perfect fifth. And if we play it from, let's say, fret five of the low eastern to phrase seven of the a string. That's also a perfect fifth. That makes things quite simple. Okay, So what we need to do is before moving onto the next video, totally memorize these intervals even if it takes you a couple of days. Just to keep going over them. I went to completely make sure that they're in your brain and you don't forget them. Because we're gonna start taking a look at how intervals can actually be applied in music using scales and chords. 6. The Major Scale: I said in the previous video, the intervals are the building blocks of music. One of the things we can build within schools is a scale. It's really important to learn scales as they help you with soloing. And the scale that we're learning today, the major scale is an absolutely fundamental scale that you need to know as everything in music theory kind of relates back to the major scale. So what is a scale? A scale is a set of notes that are ordered in pitch. So each subsequent note in our scale is higher than the previous note. The scale that we're learning, the major scale sounds like this. So we're going to learn the C major scale today is called the C major scale because the first note is C. The notes in the C major scale are C, D, E, F, G, a, and b. Every scale you're going to learn has what is called an intervallic structure that sounds quite advanced and tricky to understand, but it's really not. So if we just break it down into violet, just relating two intervals and structure is just the order of intervals. The order of intervals in the major scale is root note, which is our C root node is the first note of a scale. We've got a major second and major third, a perfect fourth, a perfect fifth, major sixth, and a major seventh. So date is our major second because it's a major second away from safe, is a major third as it's a major third away from C. F is the perfect fourth, so forth way from C, j is our perfect fifth, so it's a fifth away from g is our sixth, as it said, major sixth away from C. And we've got major seventh, which is B. B is the major seventh. Let's take a look at how to play the major scale. We're going to apply 810 on the low E string. We're going to use middle finger, little finger. Then we're going to play 7810 on the a string. You're going to use index finger, middle finger, little finger. Then the playing 7910 on the D string. That's index finger, little ring finger, little finger, getting my fingers mixed up hip. Then we're playing 7910 on the G string. Test, index finger, ring finger, little finger. Then we're playing 810 on the B string. Then 7810 on the high Eastern. Okay, So for 810 on the BCE Rome or playing middle finger, little finger for 7810 on the height Eastern replaying, indexing the middle finger and little finger. So the entire scale sounds like this. Make sure you practice it nice and slowly. The most important thing is that when you play the scale or the notes sound nice and clear and there's no buzzing. Speed is not important at the moment. Now if we move this shape up and down the fret board, we still have a major scale, but the root note while the starting note is different. So for example, if we started the shape on the third fret, third fret of the low Eastern is a G, so we'd be playing the G major scale. Now the notes and the G major scale are completely different than the notes in the C major scale. We've got G, a, B, C, D, E, F sharp. So in the next video, we're gonna talk about keys because all of the notes in a major scale create what is called a key. 7. What Is A Key?: So this lesson is gonna be a very brief one. This is about keys, oval notes in our major scale. Let's take the C major scale for example, C, D, E, F, G, a, and b, create what is called a key. A key, to put it simply is just a group of notes, for example, V7 notes in the major scale that work well together. And you can create music with all of the notes in the key of C or C, D, E, F, G, a, B. And these notes are also called diatonic notes. Any note that's inside of our key is called a diatonic note. Diatonic literally just means in the cake. And he notes that are outside of our key. So C-sharp, D-sharp, F-sharp, G-sharp, a shop, we call chromatic notes, and the notes outside of our key are called chromatic notes. So for example, let's take another scale. For example, let's take the a major scale. In the a major scale, we've got the notes a, B, C-sharp, D, E, F-sharp, G-sharp. The notes a, B, C-sharp, D, E, F sharp, and G sharp are the notes that are contained within the key of a. And he notes that are outside of those notes are not in the key of a, and they're called chromatic notes. So hopefully you've got a good understanding of what a key is now is quite simple. Just a set of notes that work well together and you can create music with. 8. Harmonising The Major Scale: Now that we've learned all about the major scale, we can learn how to harmonize the major scale. Harmonizing the major scale just means building chords. Now if you don't know what codes are, codes, or just when we play three notes or more at the same time, a major chord, for example, consists of just three notes. Let's take them the chord C major, for example. The chord C major consists of the notes C and G. So whenever we play those three notes together, we get a C chord. For example, if we're playing standard open C code like this, hopefully you know how to play the sport and not worried. In the plant five strengths. The five strengths that we're playing on a combination of just those three notes. For example, we're playing on this string, this string, g on this string, this string, and this string. Even though with my five strings, we're only playing three notes. So how do we use the major scale to build chords? We have to stack specific courts from the scale. For example, as I said, the C code consists of the notes C, E, and G. We take a look at that in the C major scale. What we've done is we've played the C note, we've skipped Day, we've played a, we've skipped F, We've played G. So applying a note, skipping a note, a note, skipping a note, playing a note. We can do this from every point in the scale. So if we started on D, we'd have to play date. We'd skip the a, play F, skip the GI, play a. So we've got D, F and a. This creates a D minor chord. Now I'll be explaining the difference between major and minor chords in a second, but just know that the second code is now a minor chord. Now let's continue through the scale. So we're gonna start an email. So we've got a, we're gonna skip F, we're gonna apply j, we're gonna skip a. We are going to play B. We get the notes E GMB length, and we've got an E minor chord. So our third chord is a minor chord, E minor. Then if we do this with f, we get the notes F and C, and we've got an F major chord. Chord four is a major chord. Then if we go to our fifth starting points, so j, we play G, B, and D. We've played J, skipping a, playing bass, keeping see playing date. We've got the notes GBD, that's a G major chord. Then we start on our sixth starting point a. We get the nodes a, C and a is creates what's called an, a minor chord, that's called six or sixth chord is a minor chord, a minor. And then a final chord starts on B. We're playing B, D, and F, and that creates a B diminished chord. So that's another type of chord we got to talk about. So as I said, in a scale we have intervallic structures. In chords, we have intervallic structures as well. So a major chord consists of a root note, a major third, and a perfect fifth. So take the C major, for example, C as our root note, is a major third away from C, and G is a perfect fifth away from seat as well. Okay, so we've got the notes C, E, and G root major third, perfect fit. A minor chord is just like a major chord, but the third is a minor third. So we're playing the root note, a minor third and a perfect fifth. If we take the D minor chord, for example, the date is our root note. F is a minor third away from D, and a is a perfect fifth away from D. And then the other type of code, we've got a diminished chord. Now we don't really use diminished chords very much, but still very important to know because there are situations where you will want to use diminished chords. Diminished chords consist of a root note, a minor third, and a flat fifth. If we take our bay diminished chord, we've got the notes B, D and F. B as our root node, D is a minor third way from B and F is a flat fifth away from B. Now, as you can see in our major scalp are codes are C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, a minor, and B diminished chords, one in 45 major chords 236 are minor, and then chord seven is diminished. And no matter what key you're working with, when we're talking about major keys here with the major scale, the chords 145 are always gonna be major. Chords 336 are always going to be minor. And chord seven is always going to be diminished as try this with another key, for example, the key of G. So we're gonna use the G major scale. G, a, B, C, D, E, F sharp. You can work the chords out if you want to, the notes in the courts, or you can just trust the AB right here. So the first chord is G major, the second chord is a minor. Third chord is B minor, the fourth quarter, C major. The fifth chord is C major, D major. The sixth chord is E minor, and the seventh chord is F sharp diminished, Okay, as you can see again, 145 major, 236 minor, and seven is diminished. Now the numbers of our courts are usually notated with Roman numerals. This is to avoid confusion with intervals. You don't, you don't want to say a number and have to ask, is that code three or does that mean a third? So when we were using Roman numerals, we know we're talking about chords. The Roman numerals are usually lowercase when we're talking about minor chords and diminished chords and the uppercase when we're talking about major chords, it's called 145 would be an uppercase Roman numerals, and then courts to 3067, it will be in lowercase Roman numerals. Let's talk about how to play the chords in the key of C. We've got C-Major, we've got D minor, E minor, F. We've got G minor, and we've got B diminished. With these quartz, we can create what's called a chord progression. Core progressions are kind of like the foundation of our song. This is what melodies are sung over. What you can play solos over a case. So what you can do is you can play a sequence of chords and you get a cool sound. Now, I'm not gonna go into the mechanics of it too much, but a good idea is to have a set of four chords. Have the first chord, B, C, have the fourth chord B, J, and then fill the other two with whatever chords you'd like. And then make sure you finish back on ca again to resolve the core progression. So for example, if I had C at the beginning, G at the end, and two spots to fill, I could choose D minor and F, for example, C, D minor, F and G. Finish back on. See that G chord? Can you hear that? Wants to go back to? That's why we don't just finish on the j. That's called tension and release. And it's a big element of what makes music exciting to listen to. It's building up tension and release an attention. What you go ahead and try and create some chord progressions of your own. Now you don't have to use the formula that I've given you, but I would suggest just to start out, you try the formulas, thought and C, finish on G, fit into codes in the middle any courts, and you create some really nice sounding chord progressions. Now in the next videos, we're going to get into the more rhythmic side of things with music. 9. Rhythm: So scales and harmony are a very, very important part of music theory. But something that's just as important is rhythm. So let's take a look at rhythm. Take a listen to this. These are called beets. Beets are sort of a heartbeat of our music. If we didn't have beats, then we'd be going faster. We'd be going slower. We'd have nothing to keep us in time. We'd be just floating around. These are beats, the heartbeat of our music, the pulse of our music. The speed of these beats is what is called tempo. Tempo is measured in what's called beats per minute. So how many of these beats happen in a minute, for example, this sounds to me, I could be wrong, but about 90 to 100. Get at that. Yeah. It sounds like it sounds about 90 to a 100 to me. I'll let you know here if I was correct, beats in most music that you hear are arranged into groups of four. And this group is called a bar. And sometimes if you were in America or in another part of the world is called a measure. Measures and bars help us organize our music into sections, so that would not play music forever. Now when we play music, we don't play just standard bees. How boring would it be if everything we played was just on every single beat? Be quite boring, wouldn't it? So we need some rhythmic diversity, which means there are different types of note lengths that we can use. Let's talk about the different types of note lengths we can use. First type of milk value is called a whole note. So this last four beats. So the entirety of a bar, I'm gonna say the beats with my mouth and I'm gonna play a whole note with my guitar. 3434, lost an entire bar. The next type of note is called a half note. This last two beaks, and it's called a half note because it fits into half a bar. So you can fit two of them into a ball. Let's take a listen to how a half-note sounds. Then we've got quarter notes. Quarter notes are exactly the same as BCE because we fit four of them into a ball. Then we've got eighth notes. So eight of these fit into a bar. So let's take a listen to how eighth note sound on the guitar. One. Then we've also got 16th notes. So 16 of these fit into a ball. Create a bar. We don't just have to use four quarter notes. We can mix it up a little bit. So for example, in the space of four beats, we could fit in to quarter notes and a half note. So 1234, something like that. Something else we could do is we could do for eighth notes and two quarter notes, that creates the entire space of a ball. Something we could also do is a quarter note. We could do a half note and then we could do to eighth notes. And that creates the same amount of time, has four beats. So let's try that out. Finally, let's try and fro some 16th notes in there so we can play four 16th notes to eighth notes and then two quarter notes, and that creates a bar of four beats. So that's how we create our rhythmic diversity with whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, 16th notes. Okay, now you can go further to 32nd note, 64th notes, 128th notes. And I want to actually really uses them very much 32nd notes you see here in there. But then when we get to 64 for those 100, no one uses those there too quick or too fast. No one complained about False. Hopefully now you've got a decent understanding of rhythm. Let's take a look at time signatures because that takes this theory that everything's in groups of four and kind of throws out on its head a little bit. 10. Time Signatures: In this video, we're gonna talk about time signatures. Now in the previous video, I said that most music that you hear is grouped into groups of four beats, although that is the case most of the time it's not always the case. Sometimes it's easier to group notes into different amounts. And this is where time signatures come in. A standard bar with four beats will be notated with the time signature for four. It's quite simple to understand. The bottom number is the note value and the top number is how many beats? So we're playing quarter notes and there's four of them, four quarter notes. Now if the time signature was 34, that means the ball. How we group our notes. The bar is three quarter notes in length. Three quarter notes. It sounds something like this. Let's make this a little more complicated. If we've got a time signature of 58, that means R bar is 5 eighth notes long. File tempo was 12341234 above 58 would sound like this one too. And that's time signatures. Hopefully it's easy enough to understand that the top number is how many beats there are, and the bottom number is what is the quality of those beats? So is it a quarter note, is an eighth note. It could even be 16th notes. You can have bars like 1716, where the bar is 17 16th notes long. That's time signatures. And that brings us to the end of this class on music theory. Let's jump into the outro video where I've got a few final words to say. 11. Conclusion: Thank you so much for checking out this class on music theory. I hope you've learned a lot about music theory and you've got a really good foundation now to learn some more advanced theoretical concepts with music. If you enjoyed this class and you want to see more, I've got some more classes on Skillshare and I've also got a YouTube channel just searched David Lovejoy on YouTube. And I hope that I can see you in another video.