All Posts by Jonathan Boettcher

Moving Guitar Scales

A question I get asked somewhat often is how do I move guitar scale patterns around on the fretboard?

Well, hopefully this video will answer those questions. We’re working with the pentatonic minor scale pattern. 

The basic idea is recognizing which note in the scale pattern is your root note, and then to understand how when you shift the entire pattern to a different root note, that whole scale changes into a different key.

If you’d like to download the worksheet I used in the video, you can do so here. (Right click on the link, and select save target as)

Why The Guitar is a MINOR Instrument

I’ve often said that guitar is a minor instrument; however the other day someone called me on that and asked me to explain it.

You see, that’s why the minor guitar scales sound best (in my humble opinion) on the guitar. Not that other scales don’t sound good, but the minor ones sound great, and they have the added benefit of just lining up great, fingering-wise.

Have you ever noticed how the minor pentatonic or diatonic scale pattern has that row where all the notes on the one fret are used?

That’s not by accident folks!

So, WHY is the guitar minor?

Well, look at the notes of the standard E tuning: E-A-D-G-B-E

What chord do those notes form? (Didn’t think that was a chord? Gotcha.)

Well, the E, G and B form an E minor chord. The second E is a repeat, so we don’t worry about that. The D is a 7 in relation to the E, which means that so far we have an Em7 chord.

That just leaves us with that pesky A…

Well, A is a perfect fourth of E, and as such it can still work in the chord. The only weird part is that given its low octave, it muddies the sound a bit. (Try an Em7 with a higher A over top, and it will sound great).

So that leaves us with an Em7+4

Hence why the guitar is a minor instrument.

To learn more about the number system that governs all this stuff on the guitar, checkout my Guitar Theory Unlocked course – that’s the kind of stuff you can have a handle on in no time flat.

Have you ever wondered why a particular chord is what it is?

In this video I’ll teach you the notes that go into a G major chord, as well as C major. You’ll see that major chords are built on the I, III, and V notes out of the scale. One of the things to watch out for is that when you change chords, you change root notes. What I mean by this is on the G major chord, the G is the I, and on the C major chord, the C is the I.

I explain all of this in a lot more detail in my Guitar Theory Unlocked course, however hopefully you’ll be able to learn something from this video too.

Let me know your thoughts on this kind of teaching video – it is my first experiment using a tablet to relate guitar theory, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on it!

Click here for Guitar Theory Unlocked

Have you ever wondered what makes a minor chord different from a major chord? The difference boils down to a single note, which is the 3rd. The other two notes we put in every chord – EVERY chord – are the root note and the fifth. Those two notes are the same regardless of whether we’re talking about a major chord or a minor chord.

There are two types of thirds, major thirds and minor thirds. So, if you’ve got a minor third in between the root note and the fifth, you end up with a minor chord.

Major and minor thirds are the color notes, and they make great harmonies. Learning to use those thirds can really help your guitar playing, and that’s part of what this lesson is about.

If you’re not familiar with the scale degrees, and how they can be used like numbers, you might want to checkout my Guitar Theory Unlocked course, as it explains that in detail.

In this video, you’ll learn how to create your own guitar chords, simply using open chords you already know, and a basic scale. The example is in the key of G, so our open chords are G, C, D and Em, Am and Bm. The relative minor scale is E minor, so we’ll use the E minor diatonic scale.

There’s nothing super complicated about this technique; basically we’re just adding notes from the scale to the chords to create new sounds that we don’t have in the basic chord forms. This technique can produce some cool ideas for song writing, jamming, or improvising.

To learn more about how chords are created, I recommend checking out my Guitar Theory Unlocked course.

Have you ever wondered how to go about changing keys in a song? Possibly in the last verse, or in a bridge, or something like that?

If you’ve ever tried changing keys in a song before, it’s possible you’ve run into the question of which chords to use while doing that.

The trick that I teach in today’s guitar lesson is quite simple, but requires a little bit of knowledge of guitar music theory. The basic idea is that you use the V chord of the key that you’re starting in as the “push” chord for going to the next key. Then you can change to the I chord from the next key, and you’ll notice that the old V chord has now become the new IV chord! It is because this chord is shared between the two keys that you can use it for changing keys in a song, and it will always sound great.

In my Guitar Theory Unlocked course I dig into this concept a lot more, and if you’ve gone through that course before you’ll know what I’m talking about. This is just one example of how numbers can actually be very useful in transposing music, because the example I gave above doesn’t require any note names, and yet it is applicable to every single key. To make this more specific, we can give names to those chords….

In the key of G, your I IV V chords are G C and D. The key you would shift up to from G is A, and the I IV V chords there are A D and E. Immediately you can see that the only shared chord is the D… So if you use the D chord just before shifting to the A, your ear isn’t going to complain.

Try changing keys in a song by using one of the other chords and you’re likely to draw some very strange looks from your audience!

Click Here For Guitar Theory Unlocked

The Four Types of Chords on Guitar

Did you know that there are really just four basic types of chords on the guitar?

Here they are:

• Major
• Minor
• Diminished
• Augmented

In most songs, you won’t even come across the Diminished or Augmented chords, so it really boils down to Major and Minor as being the two most common chord types.

And there’s just a single difference between those two chords; the third.

Both chord types have three notes in them, the tonic or root note, the fifth, and a third.

In a major chord, the middle note is a major third which is four semi-tones from the root note.

In a minor chord, the middle note is a minor third, which is three semi-tones from the root note.

That’s it – that’s the only difference between a major chord and a minor chord (in their simplest forms, anyway!).

This is just one of the topics I cover in detail in Guitar Theory Unlocked; in fact, you’ll learn how to build any chord you want using some very simple steps.

You can create your own versions of common chords all over the fretboard, if you want to!

The Guitar Theory Unlocked course is designed to give you a very good understanding of how music works in relation to your guitar… and how you can use theory to your advantage!

This is rubber-meets-the-road theory, stuff that will literally make you become a better guitar player.

Is Theory Just For Reading Music?

One misconception that I come across from time to time is that music theory is only relevant if you want to learn how to read music.

Please… say it ain’t so!

I’ll let you in on a little secret, but don’t tell anyone ok?

I never read music for guitar.

Tab, occasionally yes, but not music notation. Not that I can’t, but I simply don’t end up using it.

Hopefully we can still be friends. 🙂

And… here’s the kicker:

I consider music theory an essential, ALWAYS-USED bit of knowledge that I end up using every single time I pickup the guitar.

Music theory gives me answers in situations like this one:

I pick up the guitar and strum a C chord, the first one that comes to mind. Great. Now what?

Well, with a touch of theory, I know immediately that F, G, Am, Dm and Em are going to be great choices to go with the C.

I also know that if I want to make a riff off that chord, I should use the A minor or C major scale – whatever is closest to where I’m playing the C.

Taking it a bit further, I know that I can use intervals in those scales, for instance inverted thirds, to walk my way up from the C chord to the F (barred at the 9th fret).

Theory related concepts can just keep on feeding me ideas at this point… which means I never get bored when I sit down to play – and I can improvise for an hour and not play the same thing twice.

And I owe it all to knowing a bit of basic theory – and not a bit to being able to read music.

If that’s the kind of thing that turns your crank, I recommend checking out my Guitar Theory Unlocked course.

I sometimes call it my Crash Course in Guitar Theory.

You won’t be disappointed, in fact, I guarantee it.