Some things it just behooves you to know and never forget – like the Ten Commandments, the major scale, the minor scale, and musical intervals.
Don't ever forget these things.
This is part two of the Circle of Fifths posts, which deals primarily with intervals, but also with scales. See Part 1 on the Circle of Fifths. An interval is the relationship between one note and another note. Because there are 7 natural notes and 5 accidentals, there are 12 notes altogether, so there are also 12 intervals. If you play the open A string on a guitar (fret 0), then play the first fret (1), that is one interval. If you play the A string, followed by the 2nd fret, that is another, open A string (fret zero), followed by the 3rd fret, that is another and so on. Numerically, we can represent the fretting possibilities so. Let’s name this in accordance with the A major scale.
0-1 (flat 2nd) A to Bb
0-2 (2nd) A to B
0-3 (minor 3rd) A to C
0-4 (major third) A to C#
0-5 (4th) A to D
0-6 (flat fifth – aka the tritone, or “devil’s tone”) A to Eb
0-7 (perfect fifth) A to E
0-8 (minor sixth) A to F
0-9 (major sixth) A to F#
0-10 A to G (dominant 7th / minor seventh)
0-11 A to G# (major 7th)
0-12 A to A (octave – the higher A is vibrating twice as fast and has twice the Hertz measurement for its frequency)
IF this is beyond the scope of your mind right now and your head just exploded, pick up the pieces, put humpty dumpty back together again, and call me at 205 910 8053 for lessons. You’ll want to make sure you’ve got your alphabet down, broken into two tetrachords (sets of 4 notes) – A B C D – and E F G A – on the 5th string (the A string). See the bolded 5th string reference below for the fret numbers.
On a any type of bass guitar, guitar, or fretted instrument, playing the open string and then the 7th fret should yield the perfect fifth interval. Playing the open string and the fifth fret should yield the less perfect fourth interval.
On piano, it’s easy to play all the natural notes. On guitar, it’s trickier to see “the white notes.”
OK, so really quickly, your homework is twofold:
1) Learn the Major and Minor Scales Horizontally on the A string – the 5th string on guitar
2) Learn all the natural notes on all the strings (which have the same names as the first seven letters of your normal alphabet – A B C D E F G – and are the same as the white keys on piano). There is a way to do this quicker using the Circle of Fifths mnemonic Fun Charlie Goes Down And Eats Breakfast that I may have already shown you in lessons.
A Brief Intervallic Study
Anyway, you should learn to play all the natural notes on the guitar just as if you were playing all the white keys on piano. This is a step to mastering the instrument that most bypass and are constantly confused thereafter. If you have the time, do this early on, I recommend. Learning an octave of the moveable C Major Scale is greatly beneficial later on.
If you play all the natural notes horizontally on the guitar, you will start to recognize the patterns – always a half step between E and F and B and C, and a whole step (2 frets) between all the other letters of the alphabet (natural notes).
If you want to play all the natural notes on guitar (in the keys of C or A minor), here is a quick horizontal guitar reference for fret numbers:
6th string (same as 1st string):
E F G A B C D E
0 1 3 5 7 8 10 12
5th string (clear alphabet for A minor):
A B C D E F G A
0 2 3 5 7 8 10 12
4th string
D E F G A B C D
0 2 3 5 7 9 10 12
3rd string
G A B C D E F G
0 2 4 5 7 9 10 12
2nd string
B C D E F G A B
0 1 3 5 6 8 10 12
1st string (same as 6th string:)
E F G A B C D E
0 1 3 5 7 8 10 12
Got it? Practice those horizontal scales over and over till they make sense.
Quick reference:
A Minor Scale fret numbers: {0 2 3 5} {7 8 10 12} – {A B C D} {E F G A}
A Major Scale fret numbers: {0 2 4 5} {7 9 11 12} – {A B C#D} {E F#G#A}
Learning these two horizontal scales is your primary objective in your home guitar studies for right now.
After you can play these scales, you can play the same numbers on any scale to play the A Major Scale, D Major Scale, G Major Scale, E Major Scale, or even if you tune down or up you could even play in all 12 musical scales depending on to which note the string is tuned!
Hi i have a question, for example, i am playing an E5 power chord on guitar, i can move it anywhere and the interval shape stays the same, on piano i cant figure out why i cant use the same shape everywhere??
Hm, well the short answer is the way a guitar is arranged is different from the way a piano is arranged. Each key (whether black or white) on piano corresponds to one fret higher or lower on guitar. It just so happens that the shapes certain shapes remain the same and certain ones change. While in the key of C, the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 chords are all the same shape, when moved to other keys with sharps and flats (accidentals, i.e. black keys), the shapes tend to change, though the same mathematical principles / ratios are at work.
I’d recommend brushing up on what your 1-4-5 chords are in any key by studying the Circle of Fifths posts on the site. For the key of A major for example, the 1 4 5 chords are A D E respectively. In the key of E, they are E A B.
http://www.fretzeroguitar.com/2011/08/circle-of-fifths/
http://www.fretzeroguitar.com/2011/08/intervals/
http://www.fretzeroguitar.com/2011/09/circle-of-fifths-piano-mnemonic/
See also: http://www.zentao.com/guitar/theory/circle.html
However, with both instruments you will notice that the chord shapes only work in the same way in certain areas. For example, the two string E5 is a very moveable power chord that works between any two strings on guitar except for between the 2nd and 3rd strings. This is because the intervals produced there due to the tuning of the instrument are not a 1st and a 5th in a given key.