Mike O'Cull

 

By Mike O’Cull

 

 

I took a lot of guitar lessons when I was growing up. For most of my grade school and high school careers, I slugged it out with one teacher or another. I did learn from each person I studied with, but none of them could get me to where I wanted to be. They all skipped over vital information and made most of what was taught into incomprehensible gibberish. Later in life, I figured out some much-improved methods of teaching things like basic music theory through independent study and working with countless students of my own. What I am about to lay on you is one of the ‘secret’ bits of knowledge that I had to dig out on my own, yet is so very simple you will be amazed at how you didn’t come up with it, yourself. What I am talking about is truly learning where the chords we play every day come from.

 

Let us consider our humble C Major scale, which is spelled CDEFGABC. How do we know which of these notes make up a C Major chord? Theory books tell us that a major triad, or three-note chord, is made up of a Root, a Third, and a Fifth. What does that mean? Many students are confused by even this early point and are ready to throw their hands in the air, wave them like they just don’t care, and go back to playing TABS badly. Here is the secret: we turn notes to numbers and the odd numbers make up our chords. If we number the notes of the scale 1 through 7, we can stack up the notes with odd numbers into chords really easily. The first, third, and fifth notes of any major scale create the home-base chord in that particular key, in this case, the C chord in the Key of C. You just start on the first note and play leap frog. So, our C chord is made of a C, an E, and a G. It’s just that easy. This works with any major key and scale. The G chord in the Key of G is made the same way. A G Major scale is GABCDEF#G, so the chord is made of a G, a B, and a D. 

 

If we continue our game of leap frog up the rest of the odd numbers of the scale, into a second octave, we get all the common color notes or extensions we commonly play and see in chord charts. In other words, a CMaj7 is made of notes 1, 3, 5, & 7 and would be spelled C, E, G, B. After that, we get those pesky 9s, 11s, and 13s that the jazzier folks amongst us love to get down on. You just keep on going through odd number after odd number and you will hit only chord tones. Of course, all of this depends on you knowing all your major scales fluently, as does any study of even basic music theory. If that is something you need work on, get to it. Learn all 12 scales around the Circle of Fifths. If you don’t know what that means, drop me a line. I can help. 

 

If I have figured out anything as a player and teacher, it is what you need to know and the order you need to know it in to make sense out of the basics of guitar playing and music theory. I can ever teach you to understand this stuff without reading standard notation. Email me at mikeocullmusic@aol.com to find out how it works! Thanks for reading this far and watch this space for more cool lessons and theory shortcuts! Please visit me online at www.mikeocull.com and www.Facebook.com/MikeOCullMusic. See you next time!!

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