Half Step Theory Songs, chords, scales, licks and theory for beginner guitarists.

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Noel Harris
5 years ago
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1 Half Step Theory Songs, chords, scales, licks and theory for beginner guitarists. eginner s Quick Start: Volume 1 s and s The asics The contents of this Quick Start uide are designed to give the beginner guitarist a very basic look at the first parts of music theory that you need to learn. The intention is to give you a visual representation of what I m talking about in my beginner series of videos. Refer back to this sheet as much as you need to. Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~Ludwig Van eethoven s I recently made a video which is meant to introduce beginner guitar players to the note names. This section of the cheat sheet is a reference for that video. These are the names of all the notes available to us in Western music theory. Using these notes, you can build all scales and chords. The very first thing you need to know is that the notes are named after the first seven letters of the nglish alphabet. etween some of those notes, there are notes called sharps (marked with the symbol) and flats (marked with the symbol). The following chart lists all the note names, both with flat and sharp notes. Names With Sharps ( ): Names With lats ( )

2 That is really all there is to that lesson. You should take the time to memorize the note names in order. You should also try to memorize them backwards and get used to starting on any note and going all the way through the list. These are your building blocks and it is vitally important to know them as well as you can. s Learning the intervals is the next logical step after learning the notes. This section will cover intervals and how to use them with the notes to begin finding the notes of a specific key. Key of : The note is the root for the key of. Using this table, and a knowledge of intervals, you can create scales and chords for all the keys with a root note of. I m only using to begin with because it might be easier for most people to understand since it is the first letter of the alphabet. s we progress through the lessons, we will begin working in different keys. / Tonic Minor 2 nd Minor 3 rd ugmented 4 th / iminished 5 th Minor 6 th Minor 7 th Octave / Unison s you can see, the intervals align with certain notes once you pick your key, or your root note. Using these intervals, you can determine which notes will be in the scales and chords of the key. In the next section, I will demonstrate the process of building a scale using that table, only for this example, I am going to use the key of.

3 Key of Major (Ionian Mode): In this instance, we are trying to figure out the notes for the key of Major, so we need to start with as the root note and list the notes with the intervals. Minor 2 nd # Minor 3 rd # ugmented 4 th / iminished 5 th # Minor 6 th # Minor 7th # / Octave / Unison To create the scale of the major key, use only the notes that align with the root, the major intervals, and the perfect intervals. Leave the rest of the notes out. s you can see in the table below, the only notes left are,,,,,,, and again. Those notes make up the key of Major, or the Major scale. (This is also the Ionian mode, but we will talk more about modes later.) / Octave / Unison You can do this to find the notes (scale) of any key by making the root note align with the note name of the key you are looking for. or instance, if you wanted to find the notes of # Major, you would make

4 the # note your root note. Then you list all the rest of the notes and intervals in order. Once the list is made, get rid of all the notes that are not Major or Perfect intervals. The notes you are left with make up the scale for the key. Use this technique to learn all the keys. Practice writing the list of intervals and starting with different notes as the root. Once you get them listed, pick out the notes that make up the Major scale. The more you do this, the better acquainted you will become with the different keys. hords The chords of the key of Major are built from the Major scale that we found in the last section. You can build the chords by doing something called stacking thirds. It works like this: Start with the first note (the root). That is the 1. o to the note that is the 3 rd above it, like this: 1 = 2 = 3 = is a third above So now you have and. Now go to the note that is a 3 rd above the, like this: 1 = 2 = 3 = is a third above Now you have the notes,, and. These notes make up the Major chord. / Octave / Unison The second chord in the key of major starts with the second note of the scale as the root. The second note in the key is. So now we need to stack the thirds to create the second chord, like this: 1 = 2 = 3 = is a third above So we have and. Let s see what is a third above :

5 1 = 2 = 3 = is a third above So when we stack thirds starting from, we get the notes,, and. These notes make the minor chord. That means that the second chord in the key of major is minor. / Octave / Unison The third note in the key of Major is an. We can get the notes for the third chord in the same way. / Octave / Unison You can continue taking each note and stacking thirds to get the notes for each chord. If you do that, you end up with the following notes and chords: hord Major Minor Minor Major Major Minor iminished s that make up the chord,,,,,,,,,,,,,, In fact, you can use this technique to find the scales and chords of all major keys, which is also all 12 Ionian modes. So, let s take a look at how to figure out the other modes.

6 Modes The simplest explanation of the modes is that they are scales that are built using the same notes as the major scale (Ionian). ll you do is change the root note. or example, in the key of, we saw that the notes are,,,,,,, and back to again. If we use the exact same notes, but make the second note the root, we have a scale that looks like this: Minor 3 rd Minor 7 th / Octave / Unison ll the notes are the same as Major, but the intervals have changed. There is now a Minor 3 rd and Minor 7 th in the scale, and the and are gone. This is what makes it different. This is called the orian Mode. There is another way to look at this, and it may make it easier to understand for some. To make the orian mode, you take the major scale and flatten the 3 rd and 7 th notes. Remember, to flatten a note you go down in pitch by one half step, or one fret on the guitar. Thinking of it in this way might help you visualize it better on the fretboard. Look for my video series on the modes on my YouTube channel for more information. So, let s take a look at all the mode names. I will use the key of Major again. Mode Ionian orian Phrygian Lydian Mixolydian eolian Locrian Remember, when figuring out the modes, you use the same notes that make up the original major scale (Ionian mode). That doesn t mean that the intervals remain the same. They will change because the root note changes.

7 If you look at the Major scale, there were no minor intervals at all. ut the orian mode had both the minor 3 rd and minor 7 th intervals from the root of. When you build the Phrygian mode using as the root, you will see more interval changes. Minor 2nd Minor 3 rd Minor 6 th Minor 7 th / Octave / Unison Now we can see that the Phrygian mode has the Minor 2 nd, Minor 3 rd, Minor 6 th, and Minor 7 th. There are no Major intervals. In fact, the only intervals that stayed the same as the original key of are the, the Perfect 4th, and the. ach mode will have a different combination of intervals, but the notes will all be the same as the original Major scale you started with. Study It s important as a beginner to study this material and learn it as quickly as possible. Having just this little bit of knowledge can really improve your abilities and give you a kick start into learning the theory of how the guitar fretboard is laid out. With this knowledge you can get the chords, scales, and modes for every key there is. Set aside practice time every day, and just start with any note. Use this formula to figure out as much as you can. Try to memorize as much as you can too. onclusion I m going to stop here with this eginner s Quick Start uide. This is a lot of information to take in, and I don t want to overwhelm you with too much all at once. That tends to get confusing, and I believe it is detrimental to the learning process. There are more detailed lessons on my website, and on my YouTube channel fi you want to continue learning about this. I hope you enjoyed it. Please stop by my website for theory lessons, song lessons, and more. Thank you.

Reading Scale Charts

Reading Scale Charts My scale charts will be presented as a box shown below. All the symbols I have used to make the box easy to read and use are explained here: The root shown is always the root of the