Basic Guitar Theory

It surprises me when I hear people say things like, “I don’t need to know how an engine works to drive a car — so why do I need to know theory to play guitar?”.

Thing is, with being a musician, your head is the engine. It’s the knowledge you have inside your head that determines how far you take your guitar playing skills.

So it makes sense to learn a little theory.

What guitar theory are we talking about here?

Well, I have a pretty unique way of looking at guitar theory. I nutted this out for myself over several years.

It all came about because I became very frustrated as a guitarist. I was very good at playing basic blues and rock but when I joined a band that was a lot more adventurous and were into jazz fusion (70′s) I was way out of my depth. I needed to figure out what I was missing.

The answer was ‘theory’ of music, especially scales and chords. But more than that… an understanding of how that theory actually worked on the guitar finger board. I thinks that’s where a lot of confusion about the ‘need’ for theory comes from. There isn’t a lot of material that explains the application of theory directly onto the fretboard. But this understanding is very powerful. And once you get it you have a whole new world to explore and experiment with.

So, with this series of articles the focus will be on fretboard application of the basic music theory of scale and chords.

It’s not a quick fix or magic bullet – there’s no such thing. It definitely takes some work to understand. If you apply yourself plan for about 3-4 months of study before you ‘get it’ and the penny drops. That’s just the basic understanding. Then you have the many hours of practice that’s necessary to burn the fretboard patterns into your muscle-memory so playing them becomes natural and automatic — without the need for too much thinking..

The important thing to realize is that learning guitar is something none of us ever stop doing. We are all learners no matter what level we are at. Guitar IS a difficult instrument because of the two-dimensional nature of the fretboard layout and its odd tuning, especially between the 3rd and 2nd strings. (Generally, the guitar is tuned in perfect 4ths except the 2nd string is tuned a major 3rd from the 3rd (G) string.)

More about this later; but suffice to say this oddity seems to throw all the fingering patterns for chords and scales out of kilter. The result is it seems a lot harder to remember chords and scale patterns. Once I ‘clicked’ to this it became relatively easy to work a lot of things out that I had no clue about before. It’s a bit like walking out of a dense fog into a beautiful sunny afternoon in the country. Where you can see where you are and where you are going. And have many choices and options to what direction you choose to go.

The purpose of these articles…

The general idea is to get everything organized in your mind so you know exactly what to work on to take your playing to whatever level you want when you want. It comes down to what and how you practice.

Devising a system or method of attack that will slash years off your learning time — if you work to understand and APPLY IT! That’s because most people don’t do these things and just muck about pretending to be a musician/guitar player. But when you do these things, you’ll be miles ahead of them and you’ll also experience the joy of learning and making good, solid consistent progress week after week, month after month, year after year. (Just be aware of the fact that the more you learn, the more you realize there is still to learn. A bit like climbing a mountain — the higher you get, the more of the horizon you can see. Each step up the ladder opens up access to new levels you never realized were there.)

It’s all very well knowing a lot of stuff, but can you actually use it and play it? You have to spend a lot of time burning these things into your fingers and muscle-memory. That’s the real answer — application.

Mindset: Attitude and Focus

But, it doesn’t take a undue amount of work… it’s more about attitude and focus. All it takes is having a plan and working on it bit by bit. Start simple and build on TOP of that. Flesh the basic things out with a little more complication or advanced things.

Something like learning to play a simple open ‘C’ chord. Then you learn the ‘C’ bar chords, power chords. Then you add flavors – Cmaj7, C6, Csus etc. And you find many more ways to play a ‘C’ chord.

But with a simple practice plan you will always be moving forward toward reaching your potential.

Learning guitar IS a life-long journey. So why not do your best, even if it is at an amateur, fun level? You never know what may come of it. And the pleasure and satisfaction you’ll get from your achievements is worth it.

Integration of learning

Let’s get real here. Scales and chords aren’t something independent of one another. They are the same thing! You need to learn about both of them together. This is the biggest shortcut you can have… an understanding of how scales are the ‘mother’ of chords. Chords are made from the notes in the scale. They are part and parcel of the same thing… 7 notes organized in a particular way with a standard set of intervals.

Melody: Is simply playing individual notes of a scale to make a pleasing rhythmic and melodic sound.

Harmony: Is simply playing several notes of the scale at the same time – 3 or more notes played at the same time are called CHORDS.

Sure, there are more complex, deeper meanings for melody and harmony, but this will suffice for the time being.

That’s it for this article… I hope I’ve given you something to think about and ponder over. So get ready for more articles coming up on this very important subject.

The BIG PICTURE – The Major Scale

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