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Guitar Scales, Chords And Arpeggios

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Guitar music theory is very useful if you want to play the guitar well or write songs. Theory for guitar players consists of three parts: chords, scales and arpeggios.

Some people come to grips with scales as a matter of course, others get bogged down trying to understand the theory behind them and how they fit together. If you find yourself agonizing over scales, just lighten up and just try to find the superficial relationships between the notes on the fretboard. Finding the patterns of notes on the guitar comes as a result of starting somewhere. The next step will always be obvious.

Scales come easily to some people but others find them difficult to learn and difficult to understand. You can, in fact, relate scales to chord shapes. Understanding chords and scales is a matter of exploring the relationships between the notes on the guitar fretboard, but it is not necessary to learn to read music, just find the patterns on the guitar neck.

When you look at scales you will see a symbol like: # or b. The # is the sharp symbol which indicates when a note is played one fret above where it would normally be played. The b symbol is called a flat which is when the note is played a fret lower. One fret on the guitar is called a half step as opposed to a whole step or whole note. In the musical scale there is only a half step between the notes B and C and the notes E and F. The notes that don’t have a sharp or flat symbol are called “naturals”.

The complete set of notes in the octave are, in alphabetical order, A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G#. So these notes as they are played in the C scale are C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B. The notes on the guitar begin with the open sixth string which sounds the note E, then going up the frets, F G A B C finishing the first octave on the open fourth string D. The octaves continue for twenty-one frets on most electric guitars and nineteen frets for acoustic guitars that don’t have a cutaway body.

Chords contain three or more notes. These notes form part of a scale that has the same name as the chord. The E major chord, for example, has three notes from the E major scale. Not all notes are created equal. The most important notes in a chord are the third and the seventh. They tell us whether the chord is major, minor or dominant.

When you play chords in a particular order it is called a progression. Most chord progressions in popular music are based on the first, fourth and fifth notes of a scale. The twelve bar blues progression is one of the most popular chord progressions. Here is a how it works out in the key of C: you are using the first note – C, the fourth, F and the fifth, G. You play four bars using the C chord, two using F, the next two bars you play C again and the next two are G and F, finishing with two bars of the C chord. The most obvious example of this progression put into practice is the instrumental piece called Guitar Boogie.

I found an interesting video lesson on Stairway To Heaven featuring the CAGED system, arpeggios and chord inversions:

There is also some guitar software designed to help guitar students learn theory. It costs thirty bucks but you get it on a thirty day trial. It’s called Guitar Power and you can read about it and dowload it at cnet.com at Guitar Power (Chords, Scales & Arpeggios) 1.1.5.

Although this software is really old there’s a review from a happy customer from 2008, so see what you think.


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Category: Free Guitar Lessons

Comments

One Response to “Guitar Scales, Chords And Arpeggios”

  1. anuj
    April 16th, 2009 @ 12:56 pm

    wow thats amazing videos out there….
    the lesson is good and has many important facts listed out
    very important for a beginner to first understand the notes and then jump into the combination of 135 to make a chord from the major.minor scale…

    Very nice

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