Why Major Scales Play Nice With Major Chords.

Keys

How are keys made?  How do we know that in the key of C there is a C chord an F chord and a G chord?  If you are like me, a friend or family member just told you that is how it is, and you and I took that knowledge for granted; we did not question it, not for one a moment, because it is true. 

Now I'm a why guy, someone who asks, "why?" a lot! This why-ness runs very deep, so deep that I am like a little boy tugging at his mommy's pant leg saying, "why" to every answer she gives.  I continue until her answers are abbreviated to "because," and I reply with an tug,  "but,why?"

"Because,"

"Why?"

and finally with all her patience wearing thin, she snaps, "BECAUSE!"

Ok, the long and short of it is that I asked why keys work the way they do, not at first, but later on.  I will go out on a limb here and say that most of the questions get answered through formulas, and this one is no different. 

When building a Key all you do is start to with the note of the key you want to play in, like C for instance.  Then recite the C scale; CDEFGABC.  Knowing the scale, we add the formula 145, (not to be confused with the major chord building formula 135) and we get CFG.  That is it.   If you want to build the Key of A you just say the A scale, pick out the 145 notes and you have ADE. 

The question you should be asking right now is why are F and G chords in the Key of C when you know that F has a B flat, and G has an F sharp in their scales.  Here's why:

As you can see, the F and G chords do not have any sharps or flats in them.  Their scales do, but the chords do not. You can easily pick up their notes with the C scale, because the C scale has no sharps or flats.

The two formulas do more for you then build chords and keys, they show position.  For example; In the key of C, the F note is 4 notes away from the C note, and the G note is 5 notes away from C, or 1 note away from F.  If you think about it in steps, which I think all things guitar should be converted into steps, F is 2 whole, plus 1 half away from C, and G is 2 whole, plus 1 half, plus 1 whole, or just 1 whole step up from F.

Sounds confusing I know, but it's not because in the end, when you have your guitar in hand, you will see the steps and not just read about them.  I picture the steps as 2 +.5 = F, 2 + .5 + 1= G.  When playing you cannot get bogged down with words, so try to see the steps in numbers.

Knowing that the formulas help with finger position, let me break down what notes to play and when to play them. Going back to chord building, the C chord is comprised of CEG.  Finding the notes on the C scale is easy, because you can play the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes--it looks like this:

This works just as long as your accompaniment stays on C chords, but what if they change to an F?  Bring the key formula 145 back to mind, all you do is pick up the 4th note in the scale (because the 4th is F) and repeat the 135 formula. It looks like this:

What happens if they switch to G?  Again, the key formula shows you where to play.  G is the 5th note in the scale, so quickly move up to the 5th position and play your 135.   It looks like this:

I know I cheated and grabbed the D in the next octave, instead of the D note sitting above the G note nestled on the A string on the 5th fret. I did this because that is how I play it most of the time.  At this point, there are two things you should notice:  one is how the formulas work to give you finger position, the other is the similar pattern all three share .  The 3rd note of the scale is a half step down on the string above (backwards sounding I know, but your 1st string is the high E)  and the 5th note is .5+1 steps away from the 3rd note.  If you play the 1st note with your middle finger and the 3rd with your index and then make the long stretch over with your pinkie to reach the 5th, you can practice this idea easily.  Here they are all together:

I suggest doing this: C,135;  F,135;  G,135 and repeat in different ways. you can get a good slide up and down the neck between the F and G notes.   Do not stay in order, you need to hop about because that is what songs do.  When you feel comfortable remove your hands and practice playing them without the memorized positions. 

On a side note:  I would put a guitar player up against anyone in the game of memory.  You know, the one that starts with all of the poker cards face down and the goal is to get as many matches as you can by remembering where the card you need is located after seeing it turned over for a moment.  Guitarists are just prone to memorize position, it stems from their reliance on chords.  I would go further and say that they can even remember each technical position done in the songs they play without the use of scales, it is just something that they focus on. But when the chords are removed, steps and scales must take their place or all the notes get lost in the shuffle.   

Moving Away From Chords

What may seem like backwards thinking is sometimes forward motion.  One of the biggest concerns you probably have when learning to play the guitar is: Where do my fingers go? 
Though finger placement is the most important thing to acheive, in order to attain it we need to set it as the longterm goal, and focus on the notes and the steps that link them together.   If we just look at finger placement, we will be able to play songs we like, and even come close to the original sounds, but we will not be able to take what we have learned and play outside of the songs we have memorized. 


When you buy a book at the store to help you learn guitar, you get pages of prebuilt chords.  This is great for learning to play fast, but it also makes your mind see the rest of the neck as blank.  If we progress past the first 3 frets and move on to bar-chords, or power chords, we then grow aware of the other sounds further up the neck, but we only gain bits and pieces of knowledge.  I think this is because we have learned chords first, so naturally we expect chords to answer our questions.  I suggest we diminish our reliance on chords and see the scale as being the dominate factor in music, because it is whether we admit it or not.

On the typical neck shown in books you would see the chord as the start, but as you can see, although I start at the chord, I have placed the chord in the distance and made the scale the dominate area, because the scale builds the chords.  This I am calling the inverted neck, just because I have taken the normal and turned it around.


As I have mentioned before there is a disconnect between chords and scales, but there is also a disconnect between singing and riffing (playing lead guitar).  How many notes do you sing at a time?  Hopefully you have landed on the answer of one, if not you have two heads, have two voice boxes or you are just that good!  Playing lead and singing are closely linked especially if we look at skatt in Jazz.  For example: Skiddli, Skattli Diddli, Doo; could be seen as A, B, D, E on a scale.  If you have a good ear for music you do some stuff automatically.  When you strum a C chord your mind tells you that you can sing a C an E or a G note and still sound in key but when it comes to playing riffs it becomes a little more difficult.  Why? Let me crunch the numbers.


The moment you take your fingers off the neck, the chances of finding the right notes at the right time haphazardly is almost impossible.  Just by using the first 13 frets you get 13 notes on each string, multiply that by 6, because that is how many strings there are, you get 78 notes.  If you own a cutaway and you can reach up to the 15th fret you get a total of 90 notes.  I say good luck. Without scales it is like shooting in the dark.  Granted some notes are duplicates just an octave above or below, but still there is nothing like fumbling for a spot to play on the neck when you need to have a definite location.


I can remember a time before I saw the need for scales when I removed my hands off of the C chord and attempted to play something cool while my friend continued to play the chords of the song.  I felt like the neck suddenly grew a couple extra feet and that my fingers were forced to brave the note minefield, praying that I would find a good sound and not explode with an out of key BOMB!  I do not remember how I did, I think I blocked it out of my mind, so I am assuming it wasn't the best. 

Finding the 135 in Scales

The scales show us where to play, but not how to play with our accompaniment; in this part we will look at what to play and when to play it.  Last time I talked about chord building with the 135 formula and that will be our base for this lesson.  This formula allows you to build the major chords on the guitar. 


Let us look at the C scale:  CDEFGABC.  The 135 in this is CEG your goal when riffing around with the C chord is to play those notes the most and for the longest times.  To do this you first need to split the notes in the scale into three groups: Root note, Harmonizing notes, Traversal notes.  The root is the note that gives the chord definition, in this case it is the C note.  The Harmonizing notes are E and G they make the chord sound full but do not alter the tone.  Like if you sing harmony with someone, one person sings the lead or melody and the other can choose to sing a 3rd above or a 5th above.  If you can find a 3rd person then you could cover all of the parts, luckily on the guitar these 3 notes are just a finger's stretch away.  


The final group are the most cool; in my opinion, they make you look good.  A quick travel up the neck to G can tell an audience you are in control of your instrument--this effect works because the notes not being played in the C chord DFAB still exist, their sounds are still relevant.  Do not stay on them for very long, however, just use them to help you get to where you are going.

Counting the Steps



The best way to learn this is to slow everything down and break down my first step formula

(2+1, 3+1) into manageable bits like this.  Using the C scale:

C  D  E  F  G  A  B  C

                                                       2+1             3+1  

                                                 (1+1) (.5+1) (1+1+.5)         

Here is what it is: Start at C move up two whole steps and stop you are at E, but you have used D to get there.  Then go .5(1/2 step) plus a whole step and stop you are at G.  Moving on with whole step, whole step, half step you have reached the octave.  You want to think about it as 2 stop, 1/2+1 stop, 2+1/2 Stop. In essence you are doing a 1351 (CEGC) on the scale. So when someone is playing a C chord you can count your new steps to find the notes to stop on and use the others to show off with. I admit with this concept you would be changing scales each time someone played a new chord, and that is not practical, but this is only the start.  Now go on and make those strings sing!   

On a side note: the power chord or rock chord uses a 151 formula making it CGC, if you put your fingers in that position, they are in perfect form for making the 1351 easy, just let off of the fifth with your ring finger and pick up the 3rd with your index finger.   

 

Playing With Major Chords

For reasons I do not fully understand, many guitarists, myself included at first, have created a disconnect between chords and scales.  My theory is that most of us learned guitar through chord memorization and not chord building. I mean, who wants to do that when the goal is to play the guitar.  Getting bogged down with a bunch of knowledge about the guitar is crazy at first, that is why I say wait until you have a good year under your belt before looking at scales.  Play the guitar and have fun then add the other stuff, learn the chords, and explore the guitar.  In the words of one of the greatest songwriters of all time in the song Into the Great Wide Open Tom Petty put it best, "She had a guitar and she taught him some chords, the sky was the limit."  I know that some of this stuff stifles the fun very quickly, but hang in there--it gets better, the sky is truly the limit when we learn the answers to the ultimate question:  Where do my fingers go on the neck?

Chords do not make scales, scales make chords.  Simple right?  (Just nod and agree for the moment.)  In a book that my mom gave me, there is a chart printed on the back inside cover called The Magic Chord Accompaniment Guide.  It may not be magic, but it is awesome! The book is called Alfred's Basic Guitar Method, by Alfred d'Auberge and Morton Manus.

At first I thought the magic was what was revealed on the chart, things like in the key of C you have C, F, G as the major chords, then D minor and A minor and G7 and so on, it was eye opening.  Two years into my guitar playing, I knew only about the major chords and sevenths but not about minors.  Today I owe a lot to that chart for showing me E minor, which by the way, is my favorite chord, and I do not mean that it is one of my favorite chords, it is hands down my favorite.

What the chart does not show is how the writer put all of that information together.  Today I realize that the true magic is what is done in forming the chart, but sadly after learning this, guitar playing becomes less magical and more mathematical.  This should not be unbelievable or even catch you by surprise, because music is based in scales, and scales equal notes, and notes equal beats, and beats equal time, and time equals numbers and numbers have time signatures.  For example like this; one and two and one and two and . . . equals 2/4 time. 

Now back to the part where you nodded along, or nodded off; scales make chords.  All you need is the scale then add a formula and voila, you can build the chords you painstakingly memorized.   Take the C scale for example, CDEFGABC and the Formula 135 and you will get this:

That is it.  You have successfully built a chord.  The thing to remember is to use the scale of the chord you wish to build, for A use A scale, for B use B scale and so on.  This is only how you build major chords though, the others have their own formulas.  The notes can be arranged in any order and in any way on the neck, and repeated as well.  Next take your notes C E G and put them on the guitar in an easy to use way, the most popular is this one:

When I teach I ask my students how many notes they are playing, most count their fingers and say three and in this case they are right.  Notice that all six strings can be played because in this form CEG low E and high E are played open, along with G. 

For me I found that not having the knowledge of how this chord exists was clouding my ability to see that this chord can be played anywhere on the neck where the notes are found.  I first noticed this phenomenon when I was playing a song with my Grandpa.  When he played C, he pressed the Low E on the 3rd fret and made it G, turning the C chord into a four-fingered chord; needless to say, I was confused.  This happened many years ago, before I knew of the formula, so I wondered who was playing it right. I ran through many ideas and landed on a generational gap theory: older guitar players played C like Grandpa, and the young played like me, until one day I say another guy who played a C in a way I did not know.  Later I asked him what the chord was and he said that it was C2.  Then I had it figured out, or at least I thought I did.  Grandpa's way was C1, this guy's was C2 and mine was C3.  Not!  Later I noticed my way was used more often, so naturally I changed the order to mine being number one and Grandpa's being number three.

Here are the other two forms:

Who was right?  Everyone, but my theory of 1,2,3 was way off and the guy who classified his chord as a C2 was wrong in his classification of his form of C and this is why. 

The 135 formula helps us build chords is in the same octave. On any scale the notes 1-7 are in the same octave and the 8th is the end of the scale, but the start of the next scale in the octave above. Making the formula for his C2 written 135+9, that is all 8 notes of the scale plus 1 in the next octave, equaling 9. A true C2 would omit the E on the D string and play D open making a formula 1235.  As you can see there would have been no way for me to make sense of the C situation without the help of chord building, because I didn't have the formula to reclassify the guy's C2 as C+9.

Grandpa played the notes GCEGCE, mine was ECEGCE, and the other guy's was ECEGDE.  Notice that Grandpa's way has a more even spread then mine; 2G's, 2C's, 2E's.  Mine 3E's, 2C's, 1G. What might be a good and long debate over coffee sometime is answering which form is the best way of playing C.  I will tell you what I think, though I never play it in this way.  I choose the four fingered C as the best way.  Like I said before it gives a very even spread of the notes, but for all intents and purposes, my three-fingered C style is effective.  In the end, it may just be up to personal preference.  

So what came first the Scale or the Chord? After you build your first major chord using the 135 formula you will have your answer, and go on and add a 2 or a 9 if you want to.