Chapter 1

Guitar Theory in a Nutshell

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding why guitar theory is important

Getting to know the fretboard with the help of guitar tabs and neck diagrams

Surveying the different scales guitarists need to know

Building chords and chord progressions

Access the audio and video at www.dummies.com/go/guitartheory

So you want to find out more about guitar theory? Well, you have come to the right place. This chapter gives you a quick overview of guitar theory and explains why this information is so useful for guitar players to know. It also introduces you to some of the elements you’ll encounter throughout this book, like guitar tabs, neck diagrams, scales, and chords. Be sure to take the quiz at the end of this chapter to see what you already know about guitar theory. Then dive in to the rest of the book to find out what you don’t know.

To hear an audio example that explains why guitar theory is so important and demonstrates the sound of some of the material presented throughout this book, listen to Audio Track 1.

Why Learn Guitar Theory?

Music theory is the study of music — how it’s written, notated, discussed, thought of, and played. As you may have already guessed, guitar theory is the study of how music theory specifically applies to the guitar fretboard. It usually focuses on how the different components of songs, such as scales, chords, and progressions, fit together to create something great. Guitar theory is a topic best suited for players at the intermediate level and above who already know the basics of playing chords and who want to take their knowledge to the next level and learn to navigate the fretboard like the pros.

You can study music from many different angles. For instance, you can study notation, technique, rhythms, scales, chord construction … the list goes on and on. While all musical topics have their benefits, scales, chords, and progressions top the list of must-knows for guitarists. After all, every guitarist, beginner to advanced, strums chords, follows progressions, and plays melodies, riffs, solos, and bass lines with scales.

But what’s the point of learning all this theory stuff? Can’t you just randomly plunk away on your guitar and progress to guitar-hero status with enough practice? Well, I suppose that if you are blessed with enough raw talent, you can probably go pretty far without learning much about music. As for the rest of us, though, we need to put some thought and effort into learning about guitar theory to get what we want out of playing.

If you have ever heard a player who seems to know what’s coming next the first time through a song, you have seen what understanding a little theory can do. Knowing how music is composed before you start learning a new song can help you pick up on that song a whole lot quicker. And if you want to improvise, compose, or just understand the music you play better, you need to know the theory behind it. Plus, learning about music can be as enjoyable as playing it.

Navigating the Fretboard

Guitar players navigate the fretboard in a few ways. First, they know the location of some key notes. For example, they often know the notes along the 6th and 5th strings well and use them to track chord shapes and scale patterns. Second, they identify notes on other strings by tracing them to the 6th and 5th strings with simple octave shapes. I cover these notes and octave shapes in detail in Chapter 2; here, I introduce you to the fretboard with neck diagrams and guitar tabs.

Seeing the fretboard as a grid

Remember when you had to match shapes in kindergarten? Now you can put that skill to good use. With the way that guitar strings and frets run perpendicular to each other and the way that they are all numbered, the fretboard is like a grid. Instead of concentrating on the pitches and note names of the scales and chords you play, focus on how they fit into the grid.

Everything you play on your guitar makes a shape or pattern. You get to know important relationships in music by arranging and connecting these shapes and patterns. This grid-like arrangement is what separates the guitar from other instruments such as the piano and is why you don’t need to know how to read standard musical notation to develop a good working knowledge of guitar theory. Instead, you focus on the fretboard by using guitar tablature and neck diagrams.

Viewing neck diagrams

Neck diagrams are a great way to map out chord shapes and scale patterns. They allow you to see a bird’s-eye view of the guitar neck. Figure 1-1 shows three vertical neck diagram examples. For each diagram, you are looking at the face of the fretboard straight up and down. Here’s what you see in each diagram:

• The first diagram shows a sample G major scale pattern with the letters representing the notes.
• The second diagram shows a G major barre chord shape with the numbers representing fingerings.
• The third diagram shows a combination of both, with all the circles representing the scale pattern and the black dots specifically outlining the barre chord. Also, in this example the numbers represent neither notes nor fingerings but rather intervals (which you get to know in Chapter 2).

The numbers to the left of each diagram indicate fret numbers: 3fr. is short for 3rd fret, 5fr. is short for 5th fret, and 7fr. is short for 7th fret.

Figure 1-2 shows the same examples as Figure 1-1 but this time in a horizontal neck diagram format. Here, you are looking at the face of the fretboard longways and upside down. The top line represents the 1st string, and the bottom line represents the 6th string. This is how you see the guitar neck when you hold a guitar to play it and lean over to view the fretboard in your hands. Notice that the fret numbers appear below the horizontal diagrams.

As you see, a lot of information can be displayed in fretboard diagrams from scales to chords, notes to intervals, fingerings to shapes. Diagrams can be displayed vertically or horizontally. You see diagrams used in all these ways throughout the book.

Reading guitar tablature

Reading music is a skill that requires a lot of study and practice; not to mention, standard music notation only indicates pitches. Because you can play most pitches in several different positions on the neck, and because many of the presentations in this book focus on specific positions, shapes, and patterns, you want to know exactly where to place your fingers for certain pitches. That’s where guitar tabs come in handy. Guitar tablature, or tab for short, is a number system that indicates exactly where to place your fingers on the fretboard. If you can count the strings and frets on your guitar, then you can instantly read tab. Tab is especially handy for writing out examples that you want to play in series, like a scale pattern or a set of chord changes. I use a neck diagram to illustrate what a scale looks like as a pattern and tab to show you how to ascend and descend through the notes of the scale in the proper order.

In Figure 1-3, you see three chords written in standard musical notation. If you know how to read music, then you can easily find these pitches in the first position on the guitar.

In Figure 1-4, you see the same three chords in tab. Notice that you can now see two important things that you couldn’t see in standard notation:

• These chords aren’t all played in the 1st position.
• These chords are all based on the very same shape moved up two frets at a time.

In Figure 1-5, you see the same chords again but this time with a more complex rhythm. In this case, it’s useful to have both forms of notation. Most guitar players look at the tab to finger and fret the notes and look at the music to count the rhythms.

Reading notation and counting rhythms are beyond the scope of this book. But in case you already know how to read music a bit, throughout the book, I occasionally combine the two when I think doing so is helpful. If I don’t include music and rhythms, though, it means that they are unimportant and you should just focus on the tab.

Figure 1-6 shows an example of slash notation, which I use when you need to play chord changes in time but not in any specific position or voicing. Usually slash notation includes only very basic rhythm marks, allowing you to fill the bar any way you see fit (called comping). With this type of notation, chord symbols appear above the staff. Some forms of slash notation don’t include note stems like you see in my example, only slashes, hence the name.