(electric guitar music) - Hi, Steve Stine from GuitarZoom here. I just wanna say thank
you, thank you so much for everybody that's
been responding to these music theory guitar theory videos. It's been awesome. I'm so excited that you
guys are learning this stuff and you're actually realizing how important it is to learn
fundamental theory. It's not a scary thing and
it's not like you gotta go to six years of college
to learn this stuff. It's not all that and I'm glad that you're now realizing that. So in the first video, what we did was we set up the scenario
of the chromatic scale, understanding how all
of these notes in music actually work together, we
applied it to the guitar. The second thing that
we did, was we started learning how the major scale works and how all the keys of the
major scale are actually the same structure over and over and over, it's just as you move
further and further away from that pure key of C,
you get more accidentals, more sharps or more flats in your key, and then we learn how to
apply that to our guitar. So now the next thing we need to do is start learning some basic chord theory. Now you probably know
how to play a G chord and a D chord and a C
chord and things like that, but you might not know what's
actually happening in there. And of course the question always is well why do I need to know? Well you don't need to
know anything, I suppose, but the trick would be is
knowing those things actually tell you what notes are being
emphasized within each chord, which can really come in
handy if you're a singer, if you're trying to write a solo or you're trying to write a melody or you're trying to
improvise over the top, all kinds of different
things can happen there. Instead of just knowing shapes, if I know that this G chord is actually generating these notes, (electric guitar playing) it can give my whole musical
perspective direction as opposed to just going
well that's a G chord and this is the chord or the
scale G, and not really having any relationship between
the chords and the scales. So that's what I'm gonna
show you right now. So if you look at my white board here I've got chord theory basics. What we're gonna do is
we're gonna start off by learning what a chord really is. The root of a chord, the
strength of what a chord is. The first thing we need
to learn is this, triad. The term triad, which
obviously means three. Chords always start off as triads. In music theory, a chord
needs to be a triad and then we can expand into other things. We can make that chord bigger. We can alter that chord,
and again we're gonna do all those kinda things in the course, but let's talk about that
basic fundamental element, which is the root, the
third, and the fifth. Those three notes make up
every chord that you play. When you play a G or a D
or an A minor or an E minor or a G7 or whatever it might be, everything, from a
diminished to an augmented to a demented to a major or minor chord, it doesn't matter what
it is, they all start off with this essential core triad. Now, we've got our key of C here. These are our roots, these
are our roots, right there. So when you're in the key of
C, we know we get the notes C D E F G A and B, and
we know that because the key of C has no sharps and no flats. This seven note scale is
going to generate seven individual, independent chords. Every key will. The beauty of this is
by the time we get done, you're gonna know all the chords for all the keys, it's pretty cool. So let's take a look
at this to begin with. We have to have a root,
a third, and a fifth, and we're talking about the
distance from the root itself. So we have a root, which is C. If we go up a third, so we're at one, two, three, we add on the note E. If we go up a fifth, we go
one, two, three, four, five. C is itself, it's one. One, two, three, four, five. We look at the next chord, we have D. Well D, one, two, three, D F and A. One, two, three, four, five. The shortcut I have is
that you just count up every other note for
the first three notes. So E, FG, AB, and you
have to say it like that E, FG, AB, all spastically like that. E, G, B, that's how I
used to do it in class is I would just sit there
and go A, BC, DE. G, AB, CD, and it would give me the
notes that I'm looking for. So F A C, F, GA, BC, root, third, fifth. G B D, G, B, D, remember C is C is C. So you don't have two Cs,
it's just C D E F G A B, C D E F G A B, on and on and on. So your chord is G B D, A C E, and B D F, those are the notes. So when you play chords, these are the notes that you're playing. Now, we're not done, we have
to keep going here, alright? So the next thing we need to do is we need to talk about the intervals
or distances themselves for each one of these chords. You gotta follow along,
and again if you have a piece of paper and a pencil, or if you don't, pause the
video and go grab those and come on back because
this is gonna be huge. So C to E, what we wanna learn are the distances between each one of these. The distance from C to E is a third. The distance from C to G is a fifth. Root, third, fifth, but the truth is what chords really are are stacked thirds. C to E is a third, E to G is a third, then we'd add another third
and we'd add another third and we'd add another third,
that's how chords are created. Extending chords, we just keep stacking on another third over and over and over. D to F is a third, F to
A is a third, and so on. So let's look at the distances
between these thirds. C to E, let's think in terms
of whole steps for now, and again we'll get far more in depth in the course, but let
me help you with this. So C to E, how many
whole steps or half steps is it from C to E, and
your answer should be two. C to D is a whole step,
and D to E is a whole step. So this is two whole steps, and again this gets far deeper, but
I'm gonna try and just show you the basic
overview of how this works and then you can start using
it in your own playing. And then E to G, let's
look at that distance. What's the distance in terms of whole steps or half steps from E to G? And your answer should be one and a half. It's one and a half steps. If we look at the next chord, D to F, what's the distance there? D to E, E to F, what do you think? The answer is one and a half,
and the next one here is two. So you'll see these two
chords, the problem is they're different from each other. This first chord, two over
one and a half, is major. That's the definition of a major chord. Is two whole steps over
one and a half steps. The next one we see is
one and a half over two, and that's the definition
of a minor chord. Now when I say two,
whoops sorry about that, I gotta turn my marker there. When I say two, I'm talking about what we refer to as a major third. It is a third, we just talked about how these are stacked thirds. The bigger one is called major third. One and a half, then is of
course called minor third. So what you're dealing
with here is a major chord, is a major third over a minor third. A minor chord is a minor third over a major chord or a major third, excuse me. So what's awesome about this
is, let me just keep going and then again, when you've got some time, and you wanna work on this a little bit, grab your piece of paper, grab a pencil or a pen and take a look at this, and if you've got one now
you can keep going with me. E to G is one and a half, G to B is two. That's a minor chord. F to A is two, A to C is one and a half. That's a major chord,
two over one and a half. Here we've got two over one and a half, that's a major chord as well. We'll take a look at this
one, that's one and a half, A to C is one and a half, C to E, is two. That's a minor chord. Now, check this one
out, do this one for me. Take a look at this last one. What's the distance from B to D? One and a half. What's the distance from D to F? It's one and a half. That's kinda weird. So when you get one and a
half over one and a half, you get what's called dim-
whoops sorry, diminished. It's hard to write at an angle. You get diminished, this
chord is diminished. Now this is the point,
this is the big picture. Not that this isn't important,
it's incredibly important and we're gonna study that
in detail in this course, but let me show you this,
this is the best part. We know that the first chord is major, because it's two over one and a half, or a major third over a minor third. The second chord is minor, so I write it with a small Roman Numeral. The third chord is minor. The fourth chord is major,
it's two over one and a half. The fifth chord is major,
it's two over one and a half. The sixth chord is minor,
it's one and a half over two, and the seventh chord is
its own little beasty, it's a seven chord that's diminished. Now the truth is, is in popular music, whether it's country, rock, blues, pop, metal to a certain degree,
all those kinda things, the seven chord really
isn't used that often. You use it a lot in jazz,
but in popular music we just don't really use it that often and when it does occur, a lot
of times it actually is used incorrectly in terms of its theory. Now, again in the course, I'm gonna talk about all those kinda things. In the theory course, I
talk about all the things that don't fit theoretically as well, which is what I call real world playing, or non-logical playing
and we'll talk about all those kinda things
too, but what I want you to get out of this is that your one, your four, and your five is major, your two and your three and six are minor, and then of course your
seven is diminished. Because your half step and
whole step configuration from the last video is
the same for every key, the outcome is the same for every key. If you're in the key of
G, your one four five is still gonna be major,
your two three six is still going to be minor, and your seven is still going to be diminished. That's what's awesome about
it because of this theory, you will learn all the
chords for all your keys. What you need of course is
again it's all about order, and that's why I'm doing these
videos for you to watch them. If you understand the chromatic scale, you can create the major
scale or the diatonic scale, which is what we did in the
first and second videos. From there, we can create these chords, and we can create this chord
structure of understanding that the one four five is major and now we know why, and
the two and three and six are minor, and of course
again now we know why. So if we knew that the key of
G gets one sharp, an F sharp, we just go G major, A minor, B minor, C major, D major, E
minor, F sharp diminished. If we knew that the key of D gets an F sharp and a C sharp, and it does because of the video we
talked about last time, well then we got D major,
E minor, F sharp minor, G major, A major, B
minor, C sharp diminished. Boom, it's that easy. So it's not that it takes
so much time, it's that you have to just take things
slow and think about it. Again, if we start with the white board, if we start with
understanding what it is that we're trying to do, we get
our brain wrapped around it, then we can go to our guitar and we can start applying these things. So the last thing I wanna
do for you right now, if I can find my guitar pick, there we go, is I want to apply this
idea to your guitar so you can actually start using this and move it to any key you want. So let's head up to the C here. So we've got C D E F G A B C, and remember we talked about that last time. C D E F G A B C, well from
each one of those notes, we're gonna put a chord onto that. Now, we need to know our bar chords, so that's gonna be important. I'm just gonna be playing
major and minor bar chords to show you this, but you could play this anywhere on your fret board. So on this C chord or on the note C, I'm gonna play a C major chord. (chord plays) And the major bar chord,
of course, is done by pressing on all strings with my first finger across the eighth fret, and then I add my middle finger on the third string, ninth fret, and I add my ring finger on the
fifth string, tenth fret, and I add my pinky on the
fourth string, tenth fret. That's a major bar chord, I'm on C. Now the next one I've got is a D minor. So I'm gonna move up a whole step to D, and I'm gonna make this minor by taking the middle finger off. Now this is pretty cool, think about this. The major was two over one and a half, the minor was one and a half over two. The note that changes is the third. If I had a C chord right
here, which I do, C E and G, now pay careful attention to
this, this is pretty cool. This is a theory tip,
which I have all kinds of those in the course as well. This is two over one and a half. So right now I'm playing
this C chord, C major, right here, that's what
I'm playing, C E and G. If I wanted this chord to be minor, all I would have to do is take this E and move it back to E flat, which would make this one and a half, and this two. And the way we do that on our guitar is we just take that finger off. This note right here is the
E, that makes it E flat. So if you ever have a major chord and you wanna make it minor, all you do is flat this middle note, you
lower it one, E becomes E flat. Here's another major chord,
A would become A flat. Here's another major chord,
B would become B flat. And, of course, on the
guitar how we do that, this middle note, this
middle finger, I should say, excuse me, is the note that's the third. This is that note that
we're talking about. So I take that off, and it becomes minor. Pretty cool, huh? So again, there's lots of
revelations in this course. There's lots of different cool things that we're gonna talk about in detail so you don't question
your fret board anymore. So let's keep going. We got C major, we got D
minor, now we're gonna move up two whole steps, or excuse
me, a whole step higher, we're gonna go E minor, so
C major, D minor, E minor. On the fifth string, we're gonna do an F major fifth string bar chord. So I'm barring over the bottom five, I'm using my third finger to press on the second, third, and fourth strings. At the tenth fret, that's
major, then I'm gonna move up to my five chord,
which is also major, and then my six chord which is minor. So we have C D E F G
A, major, minor, minor, major, major, and then
when I move up to A minor, or yeah A minor here
because I'm in this key. I'm barring over again
the bottom five strings, and I'm gonna put my ring finger on the fourteenth fret of the fourth string, my pinky on the fourteenth
fret of the third string, and my middle finger on the
second string thirteenth fret, sorry about that, and there's my minor. So the awesome part about this is if you know your bar
chords, I've got myself major, major, major,
there's my one, four, five, right there, my two, three, and six are sitting right there,
minor, minor, minor. So here's one, four,
five, they're all major, and then two, three, six are all minor, and then I've got my
little diminished chord over here, which is done by playing fourteenth fret of the fifth string, fifteenth fret of the fourth string, fourteenth fret of the third string, fifteenth fret of the second string. With that, we can play a
diminished chord right here. Now again, I'm not worried
about the diminished, it's the other six I want
you to really think about. So I've got major, minor,
minor, major, major, minor, because now I could head
down to the key of G, and I have major, minor,
minor, major, major, minor. Think about how easy that
would be, with that knowledge, to be able to transpose in any key. Or somebody says oh
we're gonna do this song and it's in the key of
D, and you're like ah! No big deal, you find
D, you set yourself up, you put all six chords
in, you're ready to go. Now, there are changes, right? There are fluctuations,
there's alterations that happen in music
and we're gonna discuss all of those kinda things in this course, but this is a great place for you to start to begin building all of this. So, please remember, again thank you for all the responses we've been getting on the Facebook community page. Any time that we can discuss these things and make them make sense
to you, please do so. We're here to help you,
that's the whole point. So if you go to Facebook,
you find the GuitarZoom community page, you sign
up for it, just join it, and we can talk about any of these things at any point in time, so
I encourage you to do so. Don't feel like, I
shouldn't ask that question because people should already know that. People shouldn't already know anything, that's how you learn, you
gotta ask those questions. So in the next video, we're gonna learn how to take the major
scale and we're gonna convert that major scale into minor and see the foreshadowing
of how modes work. So good luck with our chord
theory, and I'll see you soon.
