Guitar Theory: What You Need To Know (The Basics)

what's up everyone it's happening okay it's a big day today you may be there waiting to see there we go okay so this big day is my dad's 100th birthday now my dad died in 2004 but today 100 years ago my dad was born 100 years ago it's really hard to fathom that on February 21st 1919 my dad was born crazy so I'm gonna give a discount code as I do in live streams but this time it's gonna be MB my dad's name was Mike might be out of 100 MB 120 percent off anything in my store my dad would be totally psyched about this he knew about the internet he died in 2004 he loved the Internet he loved digital you know he loved making CDs and and sending me music all the time and he would have loved YouTube he died two years before YouTube but man I think about it all the time even he would have loved this he would be tuned inning he'd be tuning in all the time if I was doing stuff like this this would be right let me tell you a quick story so when I was in college this is kind of relate to what I'm going to teach today when I was in college every day of the summer I practice and I practice about 10 hours and I worked a job working the night shift at a convenience store too so I'd worked from like 12:00 to 6:00 a.m. but I would practice I put a card table out on my front porch we had a screened-in porch and our little house in upstate New York it was right the second house in from Main Street in our small town we had town of 5,000 my dad worked for the railroad for pretty much his whole career from 1936 to 1978 and and I would go out there with a cassette recorder and staff paper and I would practice and my dad sat in a rocking chair he retired when I was in tenth grade I mean he was my dad was old look I am with my kids he was two generations older than me it's the same thing I would practice for hours and hours and my dad would just sit there and listen and he would just twirl his hair he would just that's it he just sit never say anything he kind of hum along and I would be transcribing solos I'd be doing the most tedious stuff I'd be practicing scales arpeggios learning solos but he'd never say a word he'd never say good he'd never say bad he just listened and I remember that when I became a college professor one time my parents came down when I was 25 26 they came down to see me teach and I remember telling my students is when I was teaching at Ithaca College I told me my students have said you got to be on your best behavior my parents are gonna be here how many professors have their parents come by right and so my mom and dad or I taught a guitar I taught a theory class kind of like this and I had a blackboard that I'd write on we didn't have whiteboards yet and my parents said in the back of the room didn't say anything and the kids all politely and asked questions unlike they normally would and then we did it then they came to all my classes and then myself and Steve Brown who was my teacher in my undergrad and then who we taught together we played a duo gig at the the Student Union and all the students came and my folks came and I remember it was like like it was yesterday it was it was a huge huge thing it was a real accomplishment too to have done that but everything that I did those every summer of college is really when I learned to play the guitar well I mean I started when I was 14 or so but I had routines of things that I would do and that's we're gonna talk about the guitar theory things the basics that you should know and the basics that you should know are essentially my practice regiment that I would do every day as I was learning the guitar neck okay because learning a guitar neck at the same time I was using I was learning music theory now I had a couple strategies of how I would learn things every day every day I would take a different key okay now the guitar is easier than a lot of instruments because you can transpose if I play G major and moving up one fret you have give a flat major you have a major so it makes transposing really easily you learn one set of fingerings but where the guitars tricky is that every note is found an average of 2.8 places on a 22 fret guitar so if I take the note C right if I take this C play it there there there so that one see I have it one two three four spots okay this e one two three and that's it that's in three spots okay so you'd say what does that matter well that actually makes it difficult to read that's what guitar is difficult to read on okay we're not gonna talk about reading though when we talked about theory the other day as in in a general principle we didn't this is more of the practical side of it for guitar so um we're gonna take the key of G because G is easy to visualize on the guitar is you guys are sitting there because our root note here is right at the third fret where there's the first dot on most guitars okay so my thing that I would do instead of learning modes it's it's kind of in place of mode because modes will go certain modes go together if there have partly the difference between Locrian and Ionian okay is a half step so if I play f-sharp Locrian well the G the G is right there so I may as well finish it out well I may as well finish out all the notes that are found in this for spread fret spacing right okay so this is this is my first G position now I would always say that there are really five positions of the major scale for guitar the second position would be up here study on the second of the scale so we're going to go up each note of the scale but we're gonna skip up to here because there's a half-step there so you're skip there there and then you're there okay so my next scale finger is here now all this is in my Beato book now my Beato book come does not come bound like this it's a PDF but you can get it bound it's 461 pages that's on sale in my store okay this has these fingerings in it and I call it covering the neck you need to cover the neck with all these things so you never get lost alright the next position here would be here so it'd be people would say oh that would be they'd say oh well that's a Dorian position yeah that's a Dorian because I started at a but it's really I've finished on see here okay so I'm covering all the notes at a Dorian that happens to need a position change right here the next position goes up to B now B is gonna cover this the B note and the C notes would be free be free G and C Lydian you goes up to D so I'm taking all the notes in G major in this position so I have one position two positions three positions my fourth positions up here which would be D mixolydian okay so that's the that would be D mixolydian but but I'm going all the way up to F sharp so I'm thank you where I will appreciate that so I mean so I'm finding words okay there's my C there and then I go the next position would be an e so I've started on G a B D E what's that sound like [Music] it's a G major pentatonic okay so so this is going to be out of your EA holy in shape and it's gonna get you all the way up to G and then we're back up here [Music] [Applause] so I shouldn't say that this you know if you think of it just starting on G here 1 2 3 4 5 and you go up the pentatonic scale do these 5 fingerings I call these the 5 positions of the major scale okay alright so that will cover the neck once you learn how to play those the next thing that you do is you practice it you practice playing them what I would do is I would record since I only had a cassette player I would set up a vamp well I have a sustain pedal here that will hold a chord now I can play any chord out of G major let's say I play this chord okay this is the see I played a c6 9 it is a court from the key of g-major but I'm gonna play [Music] okay so what I did there is thank you yellow house is I started to improvise using those notes because I'm gonna be I'm gonna have be able to go between those positions once I know them cold I'm gonna be able to go from here and shift to here okay then maybe shifter there [Music] [Applause] and then I can go okay so I'm I did a little secondary down in there okay so [Music] okay the next thing that I would do I would take the same scale and I would practice interval combinations okay but I would only practice the basic ones they get really complex fast I would base I would I would practice the scale in thirds in every position so that would be 1 3 to 5 3 up 1 3 to 4 3 5 so you're going to every other note I know the next position do the same thing that's how you get around that's how you get to have your lines be interesting as by as you're improvising you put in some of these you know some new some thirds in there but I only do a couple I use little bits and pieces then I'm using uh some arpeggio fragment fragments which is what we're gonna go to next you don't have to learn thirds fourth fifth six that comes later if you want you know when you start getting into those harder interval combinations six [Music] then it will take different these are not basics okay this starts to get into things like I was hybrid picking there I'm doing six [Music] okay so that would be high breathing practice thirds first okay if you can do your do a major scale all over the neck be able to move comfortably between positions right I'm doing I'm moving and doing sometimes I'm doing the notes all on one string because I just know where those notes are now I went to F major there okay so the next thing I would do is work on my arpeggios now you have two different types of arpeggios to practice basic arpeggios your major and minor triads right and then your basic 7th chords okay so I would do you know don't worry about diminished or augmented triads they're too difficult to play right off the bat just learn major and minor triads okay so I would start with G major and do take that in one position then I move up to the next note so I'm going to go up to the third which is B and I'm going to learn it in this position [Music] and then I'm gonna go eat up here and learn it there so I've learned it off the root the third and the fifth now you notice I am doing some sweet picking here but I'm not getting locked in just sweet picking so there I did some sweet headed down up down up down okay don't get locked into sweet picking right off the bat because then you get locked into playing the same fingering so you end up playing the same types of licks all the time you don't want to do that okay that's the downside of sweet picking you should be able to combine alternate picking hybrid picking and sweep picking together most of the time when people do sweet picking they will play the same types of patterns things that things that just fall under the hands okay if I play and it senses it tends to sound really choppy if you can pick every note it'll sound much much smoother each note as a fatness to it each note has its own attack and it's a different type of attack than just going down you kind of be picked picking is sweet picking okay economy picking is the same thing okay then I would take all of your 7th chords and I would just do them in one position so I'm sorry little through your minor triads so I'm gonna take G I'm gonna do G minor next so I'm gonna stay here so what I did down up down down down down down up okay so there is and then a way up so I am doing some sweet baking but you should also I can also alternate pick that you saw that should be able to do it exactly the same as if your sweet baking it should be able to do both because once again those those when your sweet picking you'll get locked into playing particular phrases okay okay then you go to the next position of G minor now once it once again these are all in my book so I go off the root right letting off the third and you can go down up down down down down down up if you want or altar I mean that part of it is a sweep or it can be I would do both I would practice both and then the next position is going to be off this D here okay so you're gonna go deep root it's gonna be the same fingering as when you did as if you did this the only difference is you can also go but that gives you a weird position change so I don't like to have people do that and you can borrow it if you want so you've got your position off here you can also you can also um so you're gonna go down up down down down up down down okay to do that okay thank you Nigel and whoever $10 guy is there and let's see here is this Keith great you should pick with your soul not a blueprint I don't know what that means but okay next thing to do is to practice your 7th chord arpeggios in one position and what you want to do is major seven dominant seventh minor seven minor seven flat five and diminished seven simply those you know have to do augmented major seventh you know what to do minor major seventh none of those I talked about this a few weeks ago but I will typically if I have G major 7 I will typically start on the seventh so then get all the notes that are in that position and then I'll end on my G then I'll go to g7 I'll come back to it thank you Frank thanks Donald then I'll go to G minor seven then they go to G minor seven flat five then I go to G diminished seven that one's a little bit trickier because there's a bigger stretch there if you're up here it's easier but down here you've got that then five frets stretched there she's kind of open your hand up okay so that's each of those goes with the chord and what you really want to do is you want to get that locked in you're in your brain you play the chord first then Thomas a minor seven minor seven flat five play the chord and then diminished seven okay and that would complete your work out with your scales and arpeggios okay so major triad minor triad off the root third and fifth the root six over yet we have to do the root five also root six sets of da of seventh chord arpeggios major seventh dominant 7th minor 7th minor 7 flat 5 diminish 7 and then you go up to your root 5 okay so your base your you need to know all of your edges off the 6th string and off the 5th string if you know that you've covered the neck okay so I would go up here and I would take this G and I would do and I played a chord then I do g7 then by G minor 7 you up to the root if you want [Music] then you do G minor 7 flat 5 then you do [Music] G diminished 7th play the chord again get the sound in your ear ok so these are your basic elements for practice you cover the neck in your major scale ok you practice your Triads or you take one interval out of your major scale each day one day I'm going to take thirds one day one in I'll take fists that's a lot harder to play other days I'll take six right I did 6 in this position right [Music] okay so there's all my sixth in that position but I would not do that every day or I take one new one every day if you do that okay over the course of a week will you do seconds thirds fourth fifth sixth and seventh okay you've covered all interval combinations okay now you'll say well what about things like the melodic minor scale well after you've mastered these in one you take one parent scale the major scale and you go through and you learn all this notes then you go to the next parent scale so there's really there's really five parent five parent scales major melodic minor okay we don't count the natural minor because they're the same notes as the majors a major melodic minor harmonic minor harmonic major and double harmonic major those your five parent scale combinations then you have your symmetrical scales besides those you have your Augmented scale your diminished scale which would be half whole which is called dominant to measure roll half which is called tonic diminish okay those are all things to know later on but these real basics like this and when you get your melodic minor scales you're going to do the same thing you're going to take G melodic minor so what I've done I did all the available notes in this position now these start to get a little trickier because because some of the fingerings um get a little tricky [Music] they get a little bit trickier as you go through okay and some of them have weird have some weird have some weird position changes in them right so if I go up to here this would be if I'm in the key of G melodic minor so I'm doing it in thirds [Applause] okay so you take a couple weeks of the major scale then you start to gain the melodic minor scale and then take a couple weeks and do that then you dig into the harmonic minor scale okay eventually you'll get into moving positions with these things with the arpeggios you know that you with so many symmetrical scales like the the diminished scale or diminished seventh arpeggio you can play the same you can play that same fingering that same fingering so that fingering will move because it is symmetrical so I'm moving on movies I know that scale then I know it moves every three frets this thing's the same thing happens with the with a whole tone scale okay so that's it gets a little trickier these these some of these symmetrical scales an Augmented scale these scales sound really cool I love that sounds beautiful beautiful sound that augmented scale that stuff for later on so these are your basics here cover the neck in all your major scales okay learn that learn your major and minor triads off each note off the root off the third of the fifth and three positions then learn your seventh chords off the low E string and the a string okay starting with by playing the chord and then play the arpeggio after it so you get in your ear the sound of the chord eventually as you start getting these under your fingers you're going to want to do things like this and you're gonna want to change positions I did these are symmetrical fingerings what I call okay this is a pianistic fingering so you get the same shape one to one or one to one four so that gets into these are more complex ideas to practice okay and this starts to connect the entire guitar with these arpeggios if I'm doing this and I go up to here well you say well what about this area of the guitar well this area the guitar is you have two [Music] that's where those symmetrical fingerings start to come in that's what starts to enable you to to connect all the positions once you get those down okay you don't have to work on you know right off the bat I wouldn't bother with things you can do economy picking if you want but within these triads anytime that you have two downs in a row okay if I play G major I'm doing those downs and I did all those hops and I did it down there okay so try to put them in where they're where they're naturally flow in there but don't don't always get locked into the same fingerings because when you do that it it starts to limit your playing to only playing ideas out of those particular positions you know you know many guys just you know they'll play those same sweet picking arpeggios though they always on the same they play in the same way because that's the only way that they practice them and they can't really flow between them okay you know so these things are hard to do too and eventually in each position you'll you'll take these triads a major minor and then you'll do them in thirds right then those are hard to do Cazares you have a lot of uh I'd what I do finger replacements that's hard right [Applause] and do the same thing for those miners you gotta be able to do all those kind of things because you're going to be using those things in your improvisation so you want to be as fluid you want to be as fluid as you can okay so that you know like I was just doing ga9 added g-minor add nine but no I can't drive that tone up there you want to hear the notes we'll get a hearing aid bro [Music] you wanted your I I like that [Music] there we go there we go how can you practice all this in a chord progression best way to practice to start to practice these things I like these sustain pedals there because I like to play a chord and I like to in it do we even have these I would just van back then so I mean I'm just playing a G major there okay I was just playing different chords in the key and I would record that then I'd practice soloing over that if that makes sense right or you can just practice with a hit this pedal here and I played a chord a minor 11 here that's in the key of G major [Music] so I did I know where those nodes are [Music] then I'll play a different chord maybe I'll play this chord [Music] right maybe I'll play this chord [Music] so I'm playing chords in the key of G right there and I'm using only notes I'm using your G major right there okay but I used some different triads and then see if I have that C major chord here right I can use [Music] it's cool you know I'm just playing to see major core but I'm playing see Lydian over it that's all G major there it's cool this is great sound beautiful sound but because I know the neck I can do that okay Beato book anything in my store 20% off today it's my dad's hundredth birthday MB 100 might be out of 100 that's my dad I miss him every day it was the best I think I went into music because my dad was a tough guy to impress he never would say anything he never would say anything positive but you knew that he was always proud of you that's all it's a trick to pull off right there that's I'd be like what do you think of that yeah not too bad that was about it yes my dad would have been 100 years old today this hundreth birthday so thanks thank you everyone DJ green arrow the best all of you be Auto Club people you guys know about the be Auto Club you can sign up for that if you want to support the channel even more I have a new level on the Beato club that we added yesterday for people I know that the Platinum level which is the highest level is always blocked up because people get in there they don't want to give up their position or anything but we added a level above platinum platinum Plus go check it out in there hey Peter Frank everybody it's [Music] it's really yeah so anyways this a great day you guys are the best thank you so much take care

Channel: Rick Beato

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Rating: 4.9046216 out of 5

Keywords: music theory, guitar lesson, guitar lessons, how to play, major scale, guitar theory, everything music, guitar chords, basic music theory, beginner guitar lessons, music theory lessons, music theory intervals, music theory 101, music theory for kids, guitar lesson 1, guitar lessons for beginners electric, guitar lessons for intermediate players, beginner guitar scales, major scale guitar lesson

Id: sKUU5JUzAu8

Length: 42min 3sec (2523 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019