"Guitar Theory" Explained in 60 Minutes

hey what's up guys Brian Kelly here from zombie guitar welcome to my super long video so you're probably wondering why I'm making a super long video in the year 2024 when everyone else is making Tik Tok videos and Facebook reels and YouTube shorts and one minute videos and stuff like that uh well it's really all just kind of in response to this one comment I'm not at all mad about this comment it's just that this person said hey you know sometimes you say this stuff is simple you know so if it's so simple why do you have so many videos and I said well it's because I'm a content creator the overarching message is pretty simple it's something I can wrap up into one single video that's this video right here so what is this message that I'm trying to get across in almost every single one of my videos that is basically it all started out when I was a young kid and I first started playing guitar and I would watch other guitar players pick up a guitar and they would just start playing stuff and I would say wow that was cool what was that was that a beetle song or something and they would say no I was just you know just playing around I was just messing around and I said wow that was cool how did you do that how did you just start playing stuff no one could just give me a clearly defined answer so from that point all the way up until this morning when I woke up I've been trying to figure this stuff out and the reason I say up until this morning is because you never stop learning I'm never going to stop learning there's no end to this I'm 30 years into my own personal guitar Learning Journey so this is what I know so far but that's really what it was all about I just wanted to be able to pick up my guitar and just place stuff so as an example of what I mean let's say we just start noodling around with some open Cowboy cords that you learn like in your first week of playing guitar you know you start to learn what chords sound good together you might play something like and then it may go to I don't know and then it may go to back to and then you might throw an A Minor and a C major back to an E you know you have that handful of chords you can start noodling around around just play those [Applause] [Music] chords All right so right now we have something where we have something to work with we have a little handful of cowboy cords so then you kind of want to take that information and you want to use the rest of the fretboard so let's start to do that so we're just going to take those chords that we just played but we're going to play them as bar [Music] [Applause] [Music] chords All right so I did right there was I just took the chord that we started out with the open Cowboy chords A lot of people refer to them as I took these open position chords that were played right here and then I just converted them into movable bar chords so the thing about guitar is that everything is movable every single concept every single scale every single cord shape so now Beyond just playing basic major and minor bar chords I'm now going to play these chords in a slightly more colored variation this is going to be known as the seventh form of these chords I'm going to explain all to you about what major chords are what minor chords are and what the seventh form of chords are coming up in this video this is just what it sounds like when I take the basic major and minor chords and play them in their slightly more colorful seventh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] form [Music] all right so I wasn't really doing anything crazy there I just took these basic major and minor movable bar chord shapes all of which had their root on the a string just to keep everything in kind of a linear fashion and I just played them in their seventh form the seventh form is just one additional note added to each of the chords All right so then the next thing that I might want to do is to add fills between each chord so how do I do that the way that I do that is is to look at the chord progression that I just played as a whole and ask myself what key am I playing in what key is this cord progression putting me in the answer to that question gives me the information that I need to add all of the fills that I could possibly want I'll explain all about keys in this video but just right now we're in E Minor all right that's the key why are we in E Minor that will be explained in this video but uh we're in the key of E minor this corol progression that we played puts us in the key of E minor minor therefore the scale that I use you only need one scale if all of the chords are in the same key as each other there's only one scale that you need to worry about you don't need to play one scale for each chord that's a big misconception it's just one single scale for all of the chords so the one single scale that I use that I'm going to use for all of my fills is going to be the E minor scale because we're in the key of E minor so if I map out the E minor scale across the entire neck of the guitar which is just seven notes all of this is going to be explained in this video don't worry but if I just map out the notes of the E minor scale I just map out those seven notes those are those are the notes that light up to me all right those are going to be the notes that I use for all of my fills so we have our first [Music] chord we then move to this chord um we go to this chord can add a couple out of key notes to make it sound a little [Music] bluesier all right so I knew how to Blues up my playing by adding some out of key stuff but in order to add out of key stuff I needed to know which notes were in key therefore I could add the out of key stuff in between the inkey stuff a little bit of theory don't need a lot don't worry all right so then we move up to the A minor chord which was up here which we played up here um and then we had a c chord down [Music] here and then back to the E chord I'm just playing around with these same basic chords I'm just like okay I'm on the E minor chord now that's the chord I play and then I'm like okay I'm on the G major chord okay that's the chord okay then I'm on the D chord okay so I'm aware of what chords I'm playing but then the scale that I'm playing around it's just the E minor scale the whole time and then if I want to make it sound bluesy or Jazzy or whatever however you want to describe it then I just throw in out of key notes in between the E minor scale notes so that's really all this stuff is the rest of this video is me just explaining the simple model let's get into it so first things first I want you to be absolutely clear about what it is that I'm teaching 90% roughly of all of my YouTube videos and every single thing on the zombie Guitar website that is considered Ed fundamental is all dionic music theory this is the fundamental stuff this is the stuff that all musicians should know this is the stuff that will allow musicians to communicate between each other this is not super detailed stuff this is just basic music theory if I could give an analogy to math this is the arithmetic of the music theory world or this is how arithmetic is in math so like all people all adults pretty much use arithmetic but then beyond arithmetic you know you don't really use calculus too much but most adults would agree that arithmetic is pretty important to know you need to know how to add and subtract and divide and multiply well as a musician just understanding this basic dionic music theory which is equivalent to arithmetic and math this is the basic stuff this is the prerequisite to jazz jazz is like the calculus of the music theory world if you are wanting to go into jazz you better know your dionic music theory and you better know it well you need to know that stuff super super well in order to be able to take on Jazz the next thing to understand is that if you are a guitar player which you probably are if you're watching my videos there is General music theory which is the music theory that applies to everything it applies to piano and saxophone and vocals and OBO and guitar and everything it's just all instruments it's General music theory and then there's guitar Theory that's stuff like the cage system the five pentatonic positions the seven three note per string patterns that is shape based theory that is specific to the guitar fretboard so we first need to make that differentiation are we learning General music theory or are we learning guitar specific Theory guitar Theory I'm first going to start this out by explaining just the general music theory as it pertains to this dionic music theory the arithmetic of music so I don't need my guitar for this because it applies to all instruments so let me just put this down for now all right so if I could sum up dionic music theory into just one simple phrase it would be 12 Keys 12 Keys now some people are going to say that there's 12 Keys some people are going to say that there's 24 keys or 30 keys and just like everything else on the internet there's going to be fights and there's going to be people calling each other names games and all kinds of stuff it's a ridiculous argument so the people that are on the 24 or 30 key side of the argument most of them will agree that there is a difference between a key and a key signature most of the people that think in terms of 24 or 30 keys will say oh yeah well there's only 12 key signatures or potentially even 15 if you kind of want to be a music theory nerd about it they will say yeah there's only that many key signatures but then there's 24 or 30 Keys you know so there's this many keys but there's this many key signatures keys are different than key signatures so under the 12 key model the model that I teach the overarching understanding of all this basically it's just that key and key signature are the same thing that's really the only difference we can all be friends if you want to think in terms of 24 keys or 12 Keys it doesn't make a difference it's just when I use the term key I'm also referring to key signature key key signature same thing for simplicity's sake there's 12 of them so since we have 12 notes in our western music system you can start on any one of those 12 notes and then play the major scale by playing the major scale starting on any one of the potential 12 starting points it'll give you a unique set of seven notes and those are the notes that make up the key signature or the key whatever you want to call it [Music] so most people that grew up listening to western style music which is the music system that was derived by the 12 notes all right we only we're using a 12 note system here so if you grow up under the the music that uses 12 notes most people have the ability to just start from any random note and then sing the major scale starting from that point like their singing may not be perfect it may be pitchy but at least they'll be able to hear in their head what the major scale should sound like that's just because we've all been accustomed to hearing the do Mias do scale right what that also tells you is that all 12 Keys work exactly the same way because we can hear DOI F do from any starting point and we can recognize hey that's the major scale because the major scale always sounds like the major scale regardless of whether it's the c major scale or the D major scale or the F major scale or the E major scale we always know it's the major scale that's because the relationship between the notes which if you want to put a fancy term on it it's called The intervalic relationship between adjacent notes oo fancy words there but that's what it is the intervalic relationship between the notes is always going to be the same so it doesn't matter which key you're playing in which of the 12 Keys you're playing in you started on one of the 12 notes you played the D mi scale now you have your seven notes those are the notes that make up the key all right so let's say that I want to play some music in the key of G major what are my notes of the key of G major well I start on the Note G and I just play the D do scale I could do this on the piano and I might have to fudge around with combinations of white and black keys until I finally get it right I'm like okay there's g d f do all right got it and then I just look at those notes I'm like okay those are my seven notes that make up the key that I'm playing in that's how I arrive this pool of seven notes notes so now I know that information now we can derive our chords so each of the 12 Keys has seven chords in it each of these seven chords has a root note that is one of the seven notes of the key that you're playing in so in order to determine the seven three note chords also known as Triads that are found in the key of G major what you do is you write out the G Major scale and then you start on any one of seven notes and then you just play every other note until you have three and then do that starting on each of the seven potential starting points within this scale that we're playing in this key that we're playing in the key of G major and then you get your Triads so starting on G skipping a note you get g b skip a note you have D then the next one is a so start on a skip a note skip a note you have a c e do that for each of the seven potential starting points that's how you get your Triads if you do the the exact same thing but you do it for four notes instead of three notes you get your chords in seventh form that's why I said when I started out playing just the major and minor chords it sounded nice because everything was in key together but then when I played the chords in their seventh form it added extra color to it it added extra prettiness to it because it added one additional tone added to it so Triads are three notes seventh chords four notes so why is this information important well it's because these are all the chords that go to together all of these chords you can play them together in any order that you want and the chords are just going to work together because it's all part of a key and then when I want to add fills I know the notes to use for my fills I just use the notes of the key that I'm playing in the whole thing that I played in the demo in the beginning was actually in this key you might not have been aware that it was in this key but it was I was actually playing what is known as the relative minor perspective of this key so so every major key remember there's 12 major Keys each of the 12 major Keys has a relative minor key and vice versa each of the 12 minor Keys is a relative major key what that means is that all of the same stuff is contained in the relative major minor pair so the relative minor of this key that we're playing in right now which is the key of G major is the key of E minor you can always determine what your relative major root is going to be because it's the sixth note of the major scale for the key that you're playing in so we're in the key of G major the sixth note of the major scale is the note E that lets us know okay the relative minor of the key of G major is the key of E minor so the E minor scale the e natural minor scale it's called is the same seven notes is the G Major scale it's just that you start on the note E all right it's the same seven notes as we just had you see that fshp in there remember we have all natural notes but we have that FP in there that's the unique set of seven notes for this key that we're playing and we're now just looking at it from the minor perspective you can do the exact same thing as you did before start on any one of the seven notes and take every other note until you have three do that starting on each of the seven potential starting points and that's how you have your Triads you do the same thing but you get four notes and then that's how you determine your seventh chords you can compare the seven chords in the key of G major to the seven chords in the key of E minor and you're going to see they're the exact same thing that's how a relative major minor pair works so that demo that I played in the beginning was I playing in the key of E minor yes was I playing in the key of G major yes which one was it it was probably E minor because I started and ended on the E minor but there was also a G major chord being used in that progression so had I ended the whole thing on a G major chord The Listener would have been like oh that was in G major if I ended it on an E minor chord The Listener would have been like oh that was an E minor it's really just it's up to you what what was it in it's the same key it was one of the 12 possible keys so do I need to stick 100% to just the stuff that's found in a key like do I have to just stick to these seven notes at all times do I have to just stick to these seven chords at all time if I want to play in the key of G major no absolutely not but in order to break the rules you need to understand the rules and that's what this is all about so there's so much cool stuff that you can do there's you can throw in out of key chords you can throw in out of key notes you can do all kinds of stuff but if you're playing with a bunch of musicians in a band and the rest of the band is fully aware we're in the key of G major here the rest of the band is fully aware in the key of G major we have these seven chords we have these seven notes that's the in key stuff everyone else is on that page you want to be a competent musician you also want to know that stuff that way when out of key stuff happens when the band wants to throw in an out of key chord here and there you just know instantly you're like oh there's an out of key cord I got that cool I can treat that cord differently I can do a little bit something a little bit different in my improvisation I am on the same page as the rest of these musicians so that's why you want to have a full complete understanding of this arithmetic a chord is considered out of key if it contains one single note that is found that is outside of the key that's all it takes so if you ask yourself is a D minor chord in key or out of key for the key of G major or for the key of E minor is a D minor chord in key or out of key you when you look at the notes of a D minor chord which is d f and a you look at the notes of the G Major scale or the e natural minor scale and you say oh well there's no F in there so a D minor chord is not in the key does that mean that you can't use a D minor chord in you're playing when you're you're playing in the key of G major or the key of E minor absolutely not you can throw a D minor chord in there all you want but it's an out- of key chord that out of key chord is going to be used to spice up the music that you're already playing the rest of the band knows that you're in the key of G major or you're in the key of E minor the rest of the band knows that when that D minor chord comes along that that's an outside chord that that outside chord needs to be treated a little bit special because it's outside of the key everyone else knows that stuff you need to know that stuff too that is the basics now when it comes to General music theory that's it that's what I consider to be the fundamentals anything beyond that point icing on the cake you know now we can just take all this stuff and apply it to the guitar but the cool thing about the guitar is that we can bypass a lot of Music Theory we don't even need to learn the notes of the Fret word because we have guitar Theory guitar theory is a big cheat it's not a bad thing it's just it we have this ability to be able to cheat why not use it you know general theory is great and we're going to take this General music theory and we're going to apply it to the guitar but we're just going to it's going to be a different perspective we're going to look at it as shapes and patterns we're going to look at it as we don't even need to know all the notes of the fretboard we just need to know the notes on a few strings and then we can apply guitar systems the three systems we're going to talk about are going to be the five pentatonic positions the seven three note per string patterns and the AED system those are guitar specific systems and they allow us to cheat and not actually learn the full scope of General music theory if you don't want to you can if you want and I highly encourage that you do but if you want to just cheat and you know get to the point where you're playing on stage and you're just jamming out and you're shredding and stuff and you don't even want to learn all that boring music theory stuff that's what the guitar Theory systems are for so like if you know the patterns for the key of say G major e ER which is the key that we've been talking about so far if you know the patterns and you know how they connect together and you can apply the five pentatonic positions and the 73 noer string patterns and the cage system to the key of G major or the key of E minor which is the same key under the 12 key model if you can apply those three guitar systems to that one key you can apply it to all 12 keys because the shapes and patterns are exactly the same for all 12 keys that is why the guitar is just one gigantic cheat code to music that's why we love it that's why it's awesome that's why I love it so you only have to learn a guitar system one time for one single key and then if you do that for one single key you can then play in all 12 keys that way you can then go and jam with a band and the band can say oh we're in the key of B flat major and you can be like oh we're in the key of B flat major no problem and you know your shapes and patterns for the key of B flat major or they can be like oh we're in the key of F minor and you can be like okay F minor no problem and you know the shapes and patterns for the key of F minor because because the shapes and patterns are exactly the same for all 12 Keys all right so the first guitar system that we're going to talk about are the five pentatonic positions so in order to apply the five pentatonic positions and allow you to play up and down the entire fretboard in the key that you are attempting to play in you're going to need to know your notes on the low E string and it would help to know them on the a string as well you don't need to know your notes on any of the other strings of course the more you know the better but you're going to at least least want to know the notes on the low E string all right once you know the notes on the low E string you can find your pentatonic position number one by taking your index finger and placing it on the minor root on the low E string or by taking your pinky finger and placing it on the major root on the low E string so the key that we've been using for the example for this whole lesson is the key of G major which is the same key signature as E minor so E minor G major pinky goes on major root index goes on minor root so anywhere I can find an e on the low E string I would put my index finger on and that would allow me to locate my pentatonic position number one or anywhere there's a g on the low E string I can put my pinky on that and that will allow me to find my pentatonic position number one as well so there's an e all the way down here but it's an open E string there's also an e up here 12th fret of the low E string so I want to put my index finger there and that's how I locate my pentatonic position number one I could have done the same thing by taking my pinky and putting that on the major scale route which is the note G and there's my pentatonic position number one so this is your E minor pentatonic position number one this is also your G major pentatonic position [Music] one so you found the the shape for pentatonic position number one for this key that shape is going to remain constant regardless of what key you're playing in it doesn't make a difference so let's say that I want to play in say the key of D major which has the relative minor of B minor and here's a quick time to just reference the circle of fifths which you can always use as a as an additional cheat sheet like if you don't want to remember that D major and B minor are a relative major minor pair the Outer Circle and inner circle that go together are always going to be the major minor pair so that's just like a quick little tip right here so let's say we're playing the key of D major which has the relative minor B minor how do we locate our pentatonic position number one you can do it the exact same way B minor put that on the note B on the low E string or D major put that on the note D on the low E string so here's a b right there seventh fret here's a d right there 10th fret all right so there's my pentatonic position number one for that key there's also a b all the way up here and then there's a d up here so b d so there's pentatonic position number one up there again so that's that's home base you can then build out from there to cover the rest of the fretboard and how do you do that well you do that with pentatonic position 2 3 four and five that's why you have five pentatonic positions it's five shapes that you have to remember those five shapes are going to be exactly the same for all 12 Keys those five shapes are going to be the same for major Keys those five shapes are going to be the same for minor Keys it's just that if you're playing in a major key you want to be aware of where the root note is the major root note so if I'm playing in the key of say G major I want to be aware of where G is at all points on the fretboard if I'm playing the key of E minor the shapes are still going to be the same the five pentatonic positions are all going to have the same shapes that connect together like puzzle pieces but I'm just going to want to be aware of where the E is at all points on the fretboard once you know where your pentatonic position number one is pentatonic position number two is going to be right in the in this direction right in that direction towards the bridge it's going to be different if you're a right-handed guitar player or a left-handed guitar player but towards the bridge of the guitar is where pentatonic position number two is going to go so we're in the key of G major E minor here's our pentatonic position number one here's our pentatonic position number two it has this shape here's our pentatonic position number three it has this shape pentatonic position number four has this shape pentatonic position number one it always goes one two three four five so five would be in this direction in the direction of the headstock so here's one here's five here's four here's three here's two and then here's one again you know so pinky could go on the major route which is G index it's not going on anything CU it's just an open E string now you know but there's your pentatonic position number one for this key right here so that's your entire pentatonic scale for the key of G major E minor so why am I talking about pentatonic scale what's up with that I was was talking about major scales and natural minor scales before why this pentatonic stuff well it's just because that's just your framework that's where guitar players start out and the reason we start out there and the reason piano players start out with the major scale is because guitar players we have this simple little box pattern to remember guitar players love patterns they love not knowing notes they love just memorizing box patterns and there's no easier box pattern then pentatonic position number one so uh yeah that's why guitar players start out with the pentatonic scale but just understand that the pentatonic scale is just five of the seven total notes for the key that we're playing in so the E minor pentatonic scale is five notes it's just five of the seven total notes of the e natural minor scale the E minor pentatonic scale has the same five notes as the G major pentatonic scale because it's a relative major minor pair so the G major pentatonic scale has just five notes but that's just five of the seven total notes of the G Major scale so now it's just a matter of saying okay so where do those two extra notes fit in to each of these five box patterns that I have to remember if I can do this for one single key and I can just remember these five box patterns and then I can just remember where those two extra notes at there the two non- pentatonic notes the two extra diatonic notes the two notes that are completing the full seven note key scale notes if I can just memorize my five pentatonic positions and then just memorize where those two additional notes fall into each of the five pentatonic position boxes and I can just do that for one key I can then play in all 12 keys because it's just a matter of locating your pentatonic box number one based on what key you're in expanding from there with pentatonic position 2 3 4 5 5 43 you know it doesn't matter find your pentatonic position number one find your five boxes fill in the two notes that's that's the five pentatonic positions in a nutshell so let's just go and fill out the uh the rest of the fretboard for each of the five pentatonic position positions for the key that we're playing in and then I'll leave it up to you to do it for whatever key you want so whenever you're playing in this pentatonic position which is pentatonic position number one for the key of E minor or G major you add in your extra two notes like this it just adds some more melodic possibilities for your playing you know if you just stick to pentatonic you know just it it has this specific sound to it but then you add in the extra melodic [Applause] [Music] notes you now you have all this cool stuff that you can do it's just more notes to play with it's all seven notes to play with as opposed to just the five pentatonic it's good to know your five pentatonic notes and then it's good to know which two notes are the non pen pic notes but are still the in key notes that's why on this diagram you see that the pentatonic notes are yellow and then the remaining notes are in Black all right it's good to know which are which so that's your pentatonic position number one you then have your pentatonic position number two right here which is like [Music] this right so we can go ahead and we can add in our notes like [Music] [Applause] this and that's part of a twoo all right so that's your pentatonic position number two it's just the same handful of notes five of which are pentatonic two of which are part of the key but not part of the pentatonic we're just a little bit further up the fretboard and it forms a different pattern this pentatonic position number one connection with pentatonic position number two as far as shapes go it's going to be the same regardless of what key you're playing in so memorize these shapes once memorize where the two non- pentatonic notes fit into each of the shapes once you can then do it for all 12 Keys let's expand a little more up to pentatonic position number three so here's that you then move up to pentatonic position number four now here's an important thing I refer to this as the a string home box I refer to pentatonic position number one as the home box and then pentatonic position number four as the a string home box reason being is because it's another reference point on the fretboard that you can use pentatonic position number one is a great reference point especially if you're playing in a key that you're not super comfortable playing in you can always find your pentatonic position number one based on the minor and major scale route locations on the low E string pentatonic position number four works the same way it's just that the major and minor scale root locations are now going to be found in the a string so we're playing in the key of G major we're playing in the key of E minor here it's still going to be minor major so index is going to go in the note E but on the a string this time and then pinky is going to go on the Note G but on the a string that's why I call this the a string home box this is just pentatonic position number four that's it so we're up here at our pentatonic position number four and here's the note E here's the note G so when I'm up this high on the fretboard I kind of don't use my pinky as much I kind of just use my third finger but just for the purpose of locating where this box resides at I could easily find my pentatonic position number four just by knowing the notes on my a string now I'm not going to go any further because not everyone has a 24 fret guitar so uh not everyone's going to be able to get to pentatonic position number five for the key of G major or E minor in this direction so we can just fill in the rest of the fretboard in this way so here's our pentatonic position number one which is always going to have pentatonic position number five right next to it in this direction so you can go ahead and you can fill in your remaining dionic notes there and and then pentatonic 4 is going to be in this direction so again this is what I call the a string home boox why is this called the a string home box well underneath my index finger is where that e is that's the minor scale rout and then underneath my pinky is where the major scale root is which is the note G so here's how I find my pentatonic position number four box pentatonic position number three with the remaining dionic nodes pentatonic position number two and pentatonic position number one so we just filled out the whole fretboard for the key of G major or the key of E minor we memorized five boxes five shapes those five shapes are guitar specific shapes within each of those five boxes we then memorized where each of the two missing notes goes all we needed to know in order to do that was what was the major scale root of the key and what was the minor scale root of the key once we know what the major and minor scale root of the key are we can then locate our pentatonic position number one once we have our pentatonic position number one we have our 2 3 4 and five or 5 4 3 2 1 we can expand the Fret word out the shapes are going to be exactly the same for all 12 keys so that is the five pentatonic positions approach to mapping out the entire fretboard for any key let's now look at the 73 not per string approach all right so in the five pentatonic approach we looked at how to map out the pentatonic scale across the fretboard and then adding in those two missing notes to complete the full seven note dionic scale the full seven note key scale so that was a five position guitar visualization system there was five specific positions to remember five specific box patterns to remember this system is seven patterns to remember each of these seven patterns has three notes per string this is just the dionic scale now there's it it's a there still overlap you still you know you're still doing the same thing the fundamentals still apply you're still mapping out the notes of the G Major scale or whatever key you're playing and it's the same shapes for all keys we're just using the G Major scale for example here or the E minor scale because the patterns are the same for G major and E minor you're just mapping out the seven notes of the key scale that you're playing in it's just that we're only focusing on the seven note scale now we're not focusing on the ponic part of it you know so even though we're not calling this the five pentatonic positions approach that doesn't mean that you can't at any point just switch to pentatonic playing if you want you can at any point in time in you're playing you can be like oh full G Major scale use all seven notes or oh just five pentatonic notes for the key of G major you can make that switch at any point it does not matter it's just that the seven three note per string method of visualizing the fretboard only focuses on the seven note diatonic scale so the way that you identify these seven patterns is you just say what is the major root of the key that I'm playing in all right so I'm in the key of G major here so the major root is the note G so I'm going to take my index finger and I'm going to put that on the Note G on the low E string here's what your pattern number one looks [Music] like so pattern number two is this which again has exactly three notes on each string pattern number three then moves up again to here which was the third note of that first pattern that we just played pattern number four moves up to here I'm just playing the G Major scale going across the low E string and that's where the starting point for each of these patterns is so there's my starting point for each of these seven patterns so now I'm here so here's the pattern here here's the next pattern here's the next pattern here's the next [Music] pattern and then back to pattern number [Music] one and then 73 no per string pattern if I wanted to locate the seven patterns for say the key of a major I would just said okay I'm going to put that on the Note a because that's the scale route there's the note a right there this is my pattern number one [Music] now this is my pattern number two now this is my pattern number three now and so on the patterns are exactly the same all I needed to know was oh what was the major scale route a okay put my index finger on the Note a there's my pattern number one 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 it'll just keep looping until you run out of Frets or if this is one it'll be 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 in that direction until you run out of Frets so it memorizes 73 note per string patterns just one single time for one single key and then you can then play in all 12 Keys using these same exact patterns and the same thing works if uh you know you're if you're playing in a minor key or something like that you can always just kind of keep the numbering the same and then just think as pattern number six being your home base so if I was in the key of G major and then I was like oh what's the relative minor of G major again oh that's right the circle of fifths gives me that information hey I happen to have that tattooed on my arm here cool all right so G E minor okay so that's the relative minor of G major okay so I know that relative minor is the sixth note of a major scale so G is one E minor is six okay so if I know that I'm in the key of E minor and I want to kind of identify these patterns I just have to know okay well E minor G Major G major is one e is six you know so six is next to seven six is after five one is before two one is after seven and so forth you know what I mean so it always goes in the same order it's always 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and if you're playing in a minor key just start out on pattern six if you want to call pattern six pattern number one cool do that doesn't matter they're just arbitrary numbers anyway you know all we just did is just map out the key scale for the key of G major or the key of E minor that's it there's actually an easier way to map out the dionic scale than the previous two methods that I just showed you ultimately we're just trying to map out the seven notes of the key that we're playing in that's all we're trying to do so you can do that exact same thing but you can do it using just three patterns if you want so the reason that this third way doesn't really get talked about very much in the internet is it's actually kind of funny because there's so many misconceptions going around on the internet and I'll talk a little bit more about these misconceptions in a bit but uh the two big misconceptions are that people are constantly confusing the cage system with the five pentatonic positions the five pentatonic positions are what we just looked at you can take those five pentatonic positions and you can map out your fretboard via five box patterns you can then take each of those five box patterns and you can add in your two remaining dionic notes at the end of the day you just mapped out your key scale and you did it using five patterns a lot of people think that that's what the cage system is for and I guess it can get you there I actually made a video not too long ago it's called the wrong way to use the cage system which is about that exact misconception if you want to check that one out but that's not the cage system really it's that's just the five pentatonic positions all right the other way the second way that we looked at the 7 three note per string patterns people are constantly confusing them and calling them modes they call pattern number one the ionian mode they call pattern number two the Dorian mode pattern number three the frian mode the lydian mode mixan mode aan mode lorean mode that's not what modes are either I have lots of videos on modes I guess if I had to recommend one I would say check out my one video called This is why you don't understand modes at least part one of that three-part series check out that video but these aren't modes either these are just seven patterns it's just a seven pattern approach to just you know mapping out your key scale everyone's constantly confusing the five pattern approach with the cage system everyone is constantly confusing the seven pattern approach with modes but there's nothing to confuse the three pattern approach with so no one ever talks about it because there's no misconception surrounding the three pattern system so we're going to do the exact same thing we did but we're not going to do it in five patterns we're not going to do it in seven patterns patterns we're going to do it in three patterns so we're going to map out this whole G Major scale we're going to map out this whole E minor scale and we're going to do it in three patterns pattern number one is pentatonic position number one it's the home box that's what it's called the home box all right we already found that that's right up here here's your pentatonic notes and then you add in your two remaining dionic notes so there's pentatonic position number one you also have pentatonic position number one down here the second of the three patterns is pentatonic position number four I refer to this as the a string home box all right so here here's your pentatonic position number four for this key here's pentatonic position number four up here as well so that's two of the three patterns now in order to complete the full fretboard we're just going to add in a third pattern so you can locate this pattern by taking your index finger and putting it on the major scale rout on the low E string and then just applying the pattern and hint hint this pattern is the same three and0 per string pattern as pattern number one in the seven pattern approach so uh first finger major scale rout there's the note G there's your pattern right there this this completes the fretboard you're just trying to map out the seven notes of the key you're playing and that's all that's it all right that's not modes that's not the cage system those are the big misconceptions that you're going to read about 95% of the time anytime you're on a Facebook group or a Reddit group or people are just passing information along and stuff like that I've been doing it for years I've been doing it for I've been on the internet dealing with this stuff for 20 years you know if you don't believe me just go on the internet and you'll see anyway uh yeah so we've mapped out the dionic scale yea let's now talk about the cage system all right so I just got done telling you what the cage system is not so now it's time to tell you what the cage system actually is so the cage system is about chords up until now we were only really concerned with the key of the music that we were playing playing in these guitar systems the five pentatonic positions the 73 not per string pattern and the simplified three pattern approach all of that stuff was just about the mapping out the key scale we weren't focused on individual chords that's what the cage system is for the cage system is about individual chords the cage system allows you to play any chord on the entire neck of the guitar using one of five shapes so in order to actually apply the cage system in order to play any chord that you want anywhere in the entire neck of the guitar you need to know three things number one you're going to need to know the notes on your low E string and on the a string the second thing that you're going to need to know is you're going to need to memorize the five cage shapes there's a c an a a g an E and A D shape memorize these five shapes don't just memorize them by shapes though memorize them by the shape and by the numbers you see that there's numbers inside of these shapes there's ones threes and fives you have to memorize this you you have to only memorize this one time you just memorize these five shapes memorize these five shapes one time you can play any chord anywhere in the entire neck of the guitar all right so that's the second thing that you need to know and then the third thing that you need to know is if the root note of the chord that you're trying to create resides on the a string then you have a c-shape and an a shape available to you if the root note of the chord that you are trying to create resides on the low E string then you have a g-shape and an e shape available to you if the root note of the that you are trying to create resides on the D string then you have a d-shape available to you I know that sounds like a lot to take in especially if you're new to this cage stuff and especially if you've been led to believe that the cage system is a way of identifying scale patterns which you're probably confusing for the five pentatonic positions I'm just saying it's a big thing that people get confused about I know this can sound like a lot to take in but I'm telling you these three things are the cage system in a nutshell memorize these three things you have to do this one time memorize this one time and then you can play any chord anywhere on the entire neck of the guitar I'll just give you one quick example like I want to play a B minor chord here right so where did my finger land all right so where's the nearest B the nearest B is right here seventh fret I'm just looking for the nearest B on either the low E string the a string or the D string so here's a b right there there's also a b right up there since I'm looking for B's on the low E a or D string so there's my two potential places for which to build chords from so knowing that if my root note location resides on the low E string I have a g-shape available and an e shape available I can play a B major chord like this so that's a B major chord in the G shape and then knowing that a minor chord is just a major chord with a lowered third so instead of having I could just lower the Third so there's a B minor chord right there or if I were to take say here's 1 35 I'm playing right there so just take the third and lower that by half step so here's a B minor chord right here that's a B minor chord you don't have to play the full chord all the way in full all the way across Six Strings you just have to play a one a flat three and a five together and then you have yourself a minor chord or I could start at that same spot the seventh fret of the low E string and then I could say okay if my root note resides on the low E string I have a g-shape or I have an e shape available to me so having an e shape available to me I could put my index finger right there on the root note and I can play an E shape so here's a B major chord if I want to turn that into a minor chord I just have to lower the third by 1/ half step so here's a B minor chord so I have a whole bunch of B minor chords just using those two shapes I have this I could play just the high four strings I could play play just the D G and B strings that's a B minor chord coming back to this G shape I could play this that's a B minor chord I can play these three notes together this is a B minor [Music] chord all right so I have complaining a bunch of different B minor chords just you know it's all coming from either the G shape or the E shape all right and then also in this area I also have the root note B right here ninth FR of the D string so anytime your root note resides on the D string you have the D shape available to you so I could always play a B major chord like this and you don't have to play all four strings here's a B major chord as well but the objective is to play a B minor chord so knowing where the third is just lower the third so here's a B minor chord all right so what I was doing right there is I was just I was using a whole bunch of fretboard area a whole bunch and I was playing B major chords and I was playing B minor chords so how can you use a B major chord and how can you use a B minor chord people ask this question a lot I mean like anytime a song has a B minor chord in it just play a B minor chord you don't always have to play the B minor chord that you were taught in the first week of guitar you know play a B minor chord like this or like this or like this or like this there's a bunch of different ways to play a B minor chord it's just three notes you're just putting three notes together the cage system just the way that we were just looking at the practical application of the cage system allows me to play B major chords and B minor chords without even needing to know the notes of a B major chord or a B minor chord like I didn't even have to know that I don't even all I need to know was B that's it I needed to know that one thing it's like I'm trying to play a B type of chord so I need to know B and then I need to know where to find the note B on either this string this string or this string if I find the note B on this string then I have a g-shape or an e shape available to me if I find the note B on this string then I have a c-shape or an a shape available if I find the note B on this string then I have a D shape available to me once I find the shape and I've already memorized the shape by its numbers by its ones its threes and its fives I can then take those numbers and I can manipulate them so one three and a five is a major chord a one a flat three otherwise known as a lowered third otherwise known as a minor third a one a flat three and a five is a minor chord you can add notes to these cage shapes to make more fancy chords seventh chords extended chords you can manipulate these chords in other ways to make diminished chords and augmented chords you can do all kinds of stuff but it all just starts with one of the five shapes and we're just applying an arbitrary label to these shapes we're just like oh that looks like a c chord that I've learned on my first week of guitar we're going to call it the c-shape that's it so just as I said everything on the guitar is movable which means that if you learn how to play in one single key you can then play in all 12 Keys that's the benefit that we have on the guitar the guitar allows us to cheat the allows us to bypass a whole bunch of General music theory yet still accomplish the accomplish actually playing the fundamentals without actually knowing the fundamentals if that makes sense so the cage system this whole the chord thing the chord shapes the the layer two as I call it on zombie guitar it's all movable in the exact same way that the scale patterns are I refer to the scale patterns as layer one in in order to apply the movability of chord changes you need to think in terms of numbers as opposed to thinking in terms of actual chords so for the key of G major which is the same key signature as E minor instead of saying okay we have a G major chord an A minor chord A B minor chord A C major chord A D major chord an E minor chord and an fshp diminished chord instead of staying that we're just going to say one chord two chord three chord four chord five chord six chord and seven chord we're just going to assign numbers to these chords because you can then look at any key in the same manner like if you wanted to look at the key of C major instead of saying C Major D Minor E minor instead of saying the seven chords by the actual chord names you could just say one chord 2 3 4 5 6 7 this now links the keys together one chords are always going to work like one chords are always going to work like one chords it doesn't matter which key you're playing in two chords are always going to work like two chords it doesn't matter which key you're playing in so that is the first step start thinking about chord changes by numbers so let's just take that example progression that I used in the demo in the beginning it was a what it was an E minor chord to a G major to a D major to an E minor to a minor to C major to E minor so we're not going to call it that anymore we're going to call it by its numbers so this is a six this is a one this is a five this is a six this is a two this is a four and this is a six it doesn't matter if I play it using the cowboy chords it I could play playing the you know the bar chords any of these movable shapes will work this is the big secret right here to applying the movability concept to C changes thinking in terms of numbers will allow you to play in any of the 12 keys and keep up with the chord changes by thinking in terms of shapes as opposed to thinking in terms of actual notes or actual chords so anytime just start today start today anytime you play a core progression anytime you listen to a core progression anytime anytime there's a core progression start getting into the habit of thinking of it in terms of numbers as opposed to actual chords because that's the first step to making this work so enough talk let me show you how this actually works so let's take the key of G major E minor which is the key we've been playing the whole time let's look at pentatonic position number one here's our pentatonic position number one right here between Frets 12 and 15 we're going to add our two extra dionic notes in here as well so we have our full seven note key scale so this is your e natural minor scale and another octave or your G Major scale in another octave and then you have the same stuff down here if you want I'm just going to play up here just because it's uh it's right in the middle of the camera and it's nice I like this area so so your one cord is always going to be found in the g-shape all right so within pentatonic position number one your one chord is always found like [Music] this you could play any combination of ones threes and fives here's a G major chord here's a G major chord here's a G major chord you know all right so there's your one chord your two chord is always going to be found in this shape within pentatonic position number one your three chord is always going to be found in this shape which is like the C shape made minor so that's your three chord found there your four chord is always going to be found in this shape which is the C- shape five chord is going to be found in the D shape your six chord is going to be found in the E shape a minor and we're not going to worry about the seventh chord that's the diminished chord we're just worried about the three major chords and three minor chords for the sake of this video so you have your 1 2 3 4 five and six chords within pentatonic position number one that allows you to play any cord progression in any key at least in pentatonic position number one so what if the band says hey we're in the key of E flat take a solo and you're like oh no I never played an E flat before but I can at least find my pentatonic position number one how do I do that well it's E flat major that's what the band said they told me it was the key of E flat major so major I take my pinky I put it on the note E flat on the E string oh there's one there's a note E flat right there E flat is one less than e if e is the 12th fret E flat would be the 11th fret so I just put my pinky right there and there's my pentatonic position number one so even if I don't use the rest of the Fret board I can still take a solo in the key of E flat major I can just Noodle around in this little scale pattern I can stick to my five pentatonic notes where I can add in the additional two diatonic [Music] notes now as I'm listening to the chord progression maybe I recognize that's a 1564 chord progression I've heard that chord progression in a million bazillion other songs I recognize that chord progression I know my one chord is in this shape I know my five chord is in this shape I know my four chords in this shape and the six chords in this shape so knowing that I don't even have to play these shapes in full I can just kind of just play like the one chord like this the five the sixth chord maybe I'll do that one in the full sixth string and then the four chord like this so I'm in the key of E flat I'm playing a 1564 chord progression I might not even know the notes on any of these other strings I I don't know what actual chords I'm playing I don't know any music theory I just know this guitar Theory stuff this is what guitar Theory allows us to do guitar Theory allows us to cheat it allows us to play in any key using shapes that we have memorized it allows us to do all this without needing to know the notes of the fretboard without needing to know the actual notes that make up each chord without needing to uh you know know the actual notes that are in each scale all right so I think I'm going to wrap this video up here this is all the arithmetic of Music Theory after you really know the arithmetic by all means go and start to study the calculus but a lot of people they start to study the calculus before they even understand the arithmetic so I'm just trying to really drill home the arithmetic all right that's what I do that's what this is I hope you guys enjoyed this video thank you guys for watching see you next [Music] time oh

Channel: Brian Kelly

Views: 20,500

Keywords: Guitar, zombie guitar, music theory

Id: uZV9oz-5J7c

Length: 59min 59sec (3599 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 22 2024