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Have you ever wondered if there’s some ’secret trick’ to learning how to play guitar? Well, there IS a trick — but it’s one that ‘hides in plain sight.’
If you want to move beyond the basics and truly master your instrument, there are two things you absolutely must do:
1. Memorize the fretboard.
2. Develop a solid understanding of the relationship between scales, modes
and chords.
The reason for memorizing the fretboard should be obvious. Knowing where all the notes are will make you a faster, more intuitive player. The reasons (there are many) behind learning the relationship between scales, modes and chords require a little more explanation.
The first thing to understand is that chords are constructed from scales.
Let’s say you want to know which notes make up the G-major chord You’d first need to know is that Major chords are built from the root, third and fifth tones of their corresponding Major scale. Then, you’d need to know the G Major scale, which is: G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G.
If you count up from G to the 3rd note you arrive at B. If you count up from G to the 5th note you have D. Play these notes simultaneously as GBD, and you have a G Major chord!
The second to understand is that scales (and,therefore, chords) can begin on any note within the key
Here’s where modes and chord inversions (‘voicings’) come in. Let’s say that you decide to play that G Major chord at the 7th fret on the first three strings of the guitar. If you strum the chord from the inside out, you will play DGB. In other words, your ‘root’ is no longer the bottom/first note of the chord. This is what’s known as an inversion.
Now, let’s say you are playing a song in G Major, and you decide to play the scale starting from a root other than G. For instance, you might begin playing the scale at D. Is this a ‘new’ scale or just the same scale from a different position? It’s actually both!
A G Major scale played from any point while in the key of G is considered “Ionian Mode”. It will always sound ‘Major’.
However, if you play the G Major scale pattern from D while you’re in a different key, you’ll be in one of the following, alternative modes: Aeolian, Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, or Locrian.
These modes will sound something other than ‘Major’. The Aeolian mode, for example, is actually considered the Minor scale (Ionian = Major scale for all keys, and Aeolian = Minor scale for all keys).
The other modes fall in between, creating interesting harmonizations and are often used in Jazz music for soloing over the more complex, dissonant-feeling chords such as the Major and Minor 7ths and 9ths.
When you learn these relationships, you’ll start to notice something akin to an ‘interlocking’ pattern on your fretboard. For example, when you know all of the inversions for a given chord, then you’ll also know that beginning a scale on the root of that inversion can lead you into whichever modal scale you want to play over the current key.
The more relationships you see and understand, the more your fretboard opens up to you for creative soloing and songwriting. The end result is learning and mastering your guitar faster than you ever imagined!
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