You won’t need a specific type of guitar for this course, as long as you have one! The interactive examples will use sound samples from an acoustic guitar, though. Later, as we cover techniques like slides and bends, you might find that having specific kinds of strings is more useful - but you should be able to practice these techniques on most strings.

This lesson will cover a few key terms that will help you along the way.

Broadly speaking, a guitar consists of a body, a neck and the headstock. There are six strings (numbered 1 (the thinnest) to 6 (the thickest)), which run from the bridge (located on the body) to the headstock, where it is wound up in pegs. These pegs can be tuned via the knobs on the headstock.

There is a board that runs along the neck and part of the body. This is the fretboard. It is divided into sections (the exact number depends on the guitar you have) called frets.

To play a sound, press on one of the strings at a specific fret, and play that string. You will notice that the sound is higher-pitched the further down the neck you go. We’ll look at why this happens in the next lesson.

As I mentioned earlier, this course will be split into two sections - the practical, guitar-oriented section and the music theory section.

It may sound dry, but music theory is incredibly useful. If you’ve ever asked yourself the following questions:

Why does this music sound good?

How do I play music like this?

How do I play along with it?

Music theory can give you the answers.

Music theory is also instrument-agnostic. This means you can apply the same theory to play any kind of instrument. That doesn’t mean you can play it well, of course - that takes practice. But theory will help you play correctly (for some vague definition of correct).

That brings us to my next point. In this lesson (and all future lessons), I will use Music Theory to refer to Modern Western European Music Notation, one of many musical traditions around the world. What makes it special is that nearly all Western music (AKA music with guitars) is written using this notation, making it a good starting point. There are many other musical traditions, many of which are completely different from the Western European one, and I encourage you to explore them as well.

Final note: Music theory is vast, and covers a lot of things we don’t really need to play guitar. Unless it’s especially interesting, I will skip over the topics we don’t need.

The Basics

Notes

A note refers to sound at a specific frequency. A note with exactly twice the frequency of another note is said to be an octave above the other note.

Scales

A Scale refers to any group of notes that spans an octave.

The Chromatic Scale

The foundational scale in western music is the Chromatic Scale, and it consists of 12 notes. For convenience, we refer to these notes with letters rather than frequencies. The notes in the chromatic scale are:

• C
• C#
• D
• D#
• E
• F
• F#
• G
• G#
• A
• A#
• B
• C (an octave higher)

I’ll explain what the ‘#’ means in the next section.

Intervals

An interval refers to the distance between two notes. The intervals between two adjacent notes on the chromatic scale is called a semitone or half-step. Two semitones make a whole tone or whole step.

Sharps and Flats

A # (‘sharp’) raises a note by a semitone eg. C# refers to C raised by a semitone. Sharps can be chained eg. C## is C raised by two semitones - which is D. Note that there are no E# or B# notes - these exist, but they’re the same as F and C respectively.

Similarly, a ♭ (‘flat’) (often written as a lowercase ‘b’) lowers a note by a semitone eg. G♭ refers to G lowered by a semitone, which is the same as F#. They can be chained just like sharps.

This means that, theoretically, there are infinite ways of representing a note: \(E = F\flat = D\sharp\sharp = G\flat\flat\flat = \dots\)

The following figure should help:

Remember the frets we talked about earlier? Each fret is a semitone away from the one before.

The ‘zero-th’ fret (playing the string without pressing a fret) is also a semitone from the first.

Go ahead and play the open strings, starting from the 6th string. Recall that this is the thickest one.

That’s the E string. The one below it is the A string.

Next is the D string.

Then the G string.

Followed by the B string.

And then finally another E string, 2 octaves above the first. For convenience, we call this the High E string, while the sixth string is the Low E string.

That gives us EADGBE.

Like I mentioned earlier, each fret moves up a semitone. So the 1st fret on the 1st string is an F, then F# then G and so on.

The full chromatic scale, starting from C (played on the 2nd string) looks like this:

Pop quiz - which fret (or frets) plays E on the 5th string?

Experiment around - try playing different notes on different strings. See if you can play the same note on all the strings.

Very few (if any) songs use the full chromatic scale. Instead, they use subsets of the chromatic scale created using a pattern of whole and half steps. The Major Scale is one of these patterns.

The Pattern

The Major scale is constructed with the following pattern: (W = Whole, H = Half):

Here’s what it means:

Start from any note. This will be the first note in the scale. Then play the note a whole step away. That will be the second. Repeat this process for each interval (the third and seventh intervals are half steps) - you should arrive at the note you started, an octave away.

An Example

Let’s try it out, starting from D:

1. D is the first note.
2. E is the second (D - D# - E)
3. F# is the third (E - F - F#) (Remember that E and F are a half step away)
4. G is the fourth (F# - G) (This interval is just a half step)
5. A is the fifth (G - G# - A)
6. B is the sixth (A - A# - B)
7. C# is the seventh (B - C - C#)
8. D is the eigth (C# - D)

That gives us D - E - F# - G - A - B - C# - D. Or, as played on the 4th string:

(I only chose the 4th string for convenience - the scales can be played anywhere on the fretboard)

Since we start at D, this is called the D Major Scale.

You might be wondering why we didn’t choose Gb and Db (as opposed to F# and C#). This leads to the second property of the major scale - Every letter (except the first) must be used exactly once in a major scale. Since we already use G and don’t use F, it makes sense to use F# instead of Gb - the same logic applies to Db as well.

More Major Scales

Try to construct a few of the major scales. For reference, I’ve listed a few common major scales and an example of how they sound. I want you to focus on the intervals, rather than the pitch of each note - as I mentioned earlier, these scales can be played on any octave, so the pitches of individual notes doesn’t mean much.

The Minor Scale Pattern

The pattern for the minor scale is the following (again, W = Whole Step, H = Half Step):

Using this pattern to construct A minor:

• We start a A.
• A whole step from A is B. (A - A# - B).
• A half step from B is C. (B - C).
• A whole step gives D.
• Another whole step to E.
• A half step up to F.
• A whole step to G.
• And another whole step, bringing us back to A.

That gives us A - B - C - D - E - F - G - A.

This is interesting - just like C Major is a ‘base’ major scale - no sharps or flats - the A Minor scale is the ‘base’ minor scale (that’s just a term I made up, but I hope it gets the point across).

You could use this to construct the other minor scales, but there are two much easier methods.

The Parallel Major

Every minor scale has a parallel major (and vice-versa). This is the major scale that starts on the same note as the minor scale.

The parallel major of A Minor would be A Major, the parallel minor of C Major would be C Minor etc.

There is an interesting relationship between a minor scale and its parallel major - to construct a minor scale, take the parallel major and flatten the third, sixth and seventh notes.

Naturally, if you knew the minor scale and wanted to construct the parallel major, you could raise those same notes by a semitone.

The Relative Major

The relative major of a minor scale is the major scale with all the same notes as the minor scale. I mentioned earlier that A Minor has no sharps or flats. Neither does C Major - these are relative scales.

To construct a minor scale from the relative major, shift the major scale 6 places to the left. In other words, a minor scale always starts from the sixth note of its relative major.

Here are a few minor scales played on a fretboard.

In the next lesson, we’ll take a look at intervals - how do you refer to the notes in a scale based on their position and purpose?

In this context, we refer to the notes as degrees, and assign each degree a name. The seven degrees of the major/minor scale, in order, are:

1. Tonic - This is the first and ‘root’ note of a scale. It’s usually the note that a piece of music starts and ends on. You will often hear that a piece of music is “in the key of [A Major / D Minor etc.]”. This tells you the predominant scale of the piece, and the tonal center - the tonic note.

   You should always aim to resolve to the tonic eg. if a piece of music is in the key of C Major (whose tonic note is C), you can play another notes as the piece progresses, but aim to end on C to resolve any musical tension.

2. Supertonic

3. Mediant - This is the third note of the scale. It forms an important part of triads, which we will cover soon.

4. Subdominant - The fourth note. It is also the fifth note going backwards from the tonic. The subdominant is a very common note in popular music.

5. Dominant - The fifth note. After the tonic, this is the most significant note in a scale, because it resolves to the tonic very nicely. Try it yourself - play a G then a C.

6. Submediant - The sixth note. In contrast to the median (three notes above the root), the submediant is three notes below the root.

7. Leading Tone - The seventh note. This ’leads up’ to the root.

The Circle of Fifths is a fascinating representation of musical notes. This lesson shows how it can help you construct major scales.

Constructing the Circle

To construct the Circle of Fifths, take a given note - let’s use C for this example.

Then take the note a perfect fifth above C - counting seven semitones gives us G.

Then take the note a perfect fifth from G. This gives us D.

Repeat this process until you get back to C. The result should look like this:

(You might wonder why I use flats on the left side instead of sharps; I’ll answer that in a second).

Building Major Scales

The key signatures

In broad terms, the key signature of a scale refers to the flats/sharps in the scale, which help identify it. The circle of fifths helps deduce the key signatures of all the scales it contains. Don’t believe me?

Going clockwise

Take a look at the top of the circle: C. The C Major scale contains 0 sharps and 0 flats, as we found in the previous lesson. You can construct the scale yourself to verify.

Going clockwise, the next one is G. G Major contains 1 sharp - F#. Next is D Major, with two sharps: F# and C#. See the pattern?

Fast-forward to Db/C#. This is the scale with the most sharps - F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E# and B# (going in order from F). That brings us to Ab. We would expect this scale to have 8 sharps, one more than C#. But constructing the scale that way (using G# instead of Ab) leads to this:

G# - A# - B# - C# - D# - E# - F## - G#

Notice the double-sharp on F - this is the same note as G. Using Ab instead of G# allows us to write a much neater version of the scale:

Ab - Bb - C - Db - Eb - F - G - Ab

The same logic applies to all the flatted notes on the left-half of the scale. In fact, a similar pattern emerges on this side as well.

Going counter-clockwise

Starting from C again, but going counter-clockwise: the first note we see is F. This has one flat - Bb. Next is Bb itself, with two flats: Bb and Eb. This is followed by Eb with three flats - Bb, Eb and Ab. This continues down to B (AKA Cb) with seven flats - Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb and Fb.

Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Burgers

This is a fun acronym that my high school Music Theory teacher used to remember a condensed version of the circle of fifths. It works very similarly to the circle - count up from C to the scale that you’re constructing. Going to the right added sharps (starting from F#) and going to the left added flats (starting from Bb). The difference is that wrapping around the right (going from B to F) adds a sharp (the F becomes an F#). Wrapping around the left (from F to B) added a flat (B to Bb). So, if you wanted to construct F Major, you would go 1 spot to the left. To construct F# Major, you would go 6 spots to the right (5 up to B, then wrap around to F#).

This method is much easier to remember and works well for me, but your experience may vary.