This second installment of Really Useful Guitar Stuff is all about chords. Having covered chord construction in Practical Music Theory it is now time to put all that knowledge to use and learn how to create chords all over the fingerboard.
It's divided into 3 parts, the first covers the E and A Shapes and is the most important information that should be mastered before moving onto Part 2 which covers the less common grips that use the C, D and G Shapes. Part 3 is just a reference guide to check your chord grips quickly and easily if you need to.
justin guitar chord construction guide pdf
It will require you to work yourself, it's not a spoon feeding chord book! Not just a load of shapes to learn, but a guide to how chords are formed all over the neck and with a little work from yourself you will have a very solid understanding of chords and should be able to play most songs including most jazz standards with the chord grips you will learn in this pack.
Fig. 3 shows all the CAGED chords as barre chords. (Note: No barre is needed to play the "D" shape as a closed chord.) Some of these shapes may feel like old friends. The first barre chords most guitar players learn are the barre form of the "A" and "E" shapes.
Up to this point, we've focused on acquiring the chord shapes and laying the foundation for realizing the full potential of the CAGED system. Think of each shape in the system as a puzzle piece: When all the pieces are connected, you will have mapped the entire fretboard. Again, the best way to see how this works is to experience it on your guitar. Play each of the chords listed in Fig. 7, paying attention to the fret markers and spacing of the shapes.
What did you notice? If you played this example correctly, you should have heard that they were all C chords. Hopefully you realized that you used all five shapes and you ended with the same shape you started with (assuming you have a cutaway on your guitar that allows you to access the higher frets).
Drop 2 chords are built by dropping the second highest note of a four-note chord in close position to the lowest note of the chord. These chords are the most easy to play because all the notes on the guitar neck are close together. There is no string skip.
1 Really Useful Guitar Stuff - Part 1 Practical Music Theory by Justin Sandercoe justinguitar.com All rights reserved. Written by Justin Sandercoe. Version 3.1 (PDF version) Please do not copy or distribute my work. The web site gives away a lot for free so please don t abuse it
7 The Six Key Tones There are six key notes that you MUST learn on the 6 th and 5 th strings - shown on your left. You should be able to find any note on those thickest two strings from these six key tones without having to count up the string from the nut. Just use what you learnt from the note circle. The 5 th and 6th strings are THE most important note positions to learn you will use them to find the root notes for all your scales and barre chords. The light grey notes should be very obvious, they are just the open string notes and the C and F are just a semitone up from B and E. But you knew that already from the last lesson, didn t you? Now you never have to go more than two steps to find the name of any note on the thickest two strings! A fun way to help memorise them is to use a mnemonic - a big word for making up rhymes and creating pictures to help you remember things. In this instance we can use the picture of 3 Gay Cats to remember that at the 3 rd fret the notes are G and C. For this mnemonic to work you must make the image as vivid as possible. Try imagining the three gay cats with sparkling collars and little leather pants dancing to YMCA on a fence :) The bad stereotype will help you remember it. For the fifth fret you just need to remember that all the practice you are doing on the guitar will give you 5 Able Digits (fingers). Just look at your hand and think about your digits moving in crazy ways around those notes. For the seventh fret you might use 7 Beautiful Elephants. Each one is wearing a beautiful saddle made of silk and each one has a day of the week written in big letters on it (that s how we remember there are 7 of them). Imagine the elephants with the beautiful coloured silk saddles with the days written clearly in your mind. This may sound like kid s stuff, but it works. If you know the notes already, then you are on your way to getting to know them all over the fingerboard! If you have a Jam Buddy (someone that you practice with) then ask them to point to the neck on one the thickest two strings and see how fast you can name the note. This is great way to get to know them, and a bit of friendly competition can really speed things up! Page 7
9 Know Where The Notes Are Using Octaves is the fastest ways to know the notes on the fingerboard. But once you know them a bit, then you might like to try this exercise. Knowing all the notes quickly will help you find chords and scales, move licks to other parts of the neck, and work out the notes in chords that you play (and change them later!). As well as learning the notes it will help your position jumping technique. But only start this when you can find the notes easily using the Octave Shapes! For the example below we will use the note C, but you should practice all the notes. (Suggested order: C, G, D, A, E, B and then F). Don t bother with practising the # s and b s. Start by playing C on the 6th string (8th fret) then on the 5th string (3rd fret) then on 4th string (10th fret) and so on up to the 1st string and back down to the 6th. Then go on to the next note (G) and do the same thing. C example (in TAB) The Rules 1. Don t play any notes open (play the 12 th fret). 2. Use the 1st finger to play all the notes. 3. Do it with a metronome if you have one and slowly build up the speed. A good starting speed would be 60 bpm (one note per click), and a target speed would be 160 bpm. 4. Add one note at a time, but still keep working on the earlier notes or you will forget them! So play all the C s then the G s. Then when you add the D s you would play: C s, G s then D s build it up slowly and you will build it well. Make sure you follow the rules closely so you spend your time learning the best way that you can. Aim to never waste your practice time doing something the wrong way. Hint: Use the dots. They can really help. Memorise what notes are near the dots. Another hint: Look at the fret where you want your finger to go before you move your finger there! That is the secret to making big position jumps on the guitar! Page 9
10 The Mind Bending Note Finding Game This exercise is not for the faint hearted. It is a very hard exercise and should not be attempted until you know the notes pretty well using the previously discussed methods. Just continue through this book and come back to this exercise later. It is very demanding but a great way to learn the notes when you have nothing else to do, like being stuck on a plane or train or at work ;) The idea is to be able to see all the notes in your mind s eye. It is quite easy to develop a whole fingerboard in your head and be able to work out chords and such visually, without a guitar but it does take some practice. Years of practice. But it s worth it. If you are up for this little game then follow the directions below. 1. Roughly draw out a table as shown below on lined paper. 2. Write 1-6 and 6-1 at the top of each column. These represent whether you will be writing the notes from the 1 st string to the 6 th string or the other way round. 3. Write the number 1 to 12 in a random order down the page, once for each column as shown. Try not to put consecutive numbers together because it makes it easy to cheat. 4. Then you are ready to begin. Get your pencil ready... 1 to 6 6 to 1 4 G#, D#, B, F#, C#, G# Look in the first space in the example above - column 1 to 6 means you are naming the notes from the 1 st (thinnest) string down to the 6 th (thickest) string. The number on the left means you are naming the notes at the 4 th fret! 6. The notes for that example are shown. 7. You can use either sharps or flats - maybe do one column using only sharps and one using only flats, maybe one day all sharps, and the next all flats - it s up to you! 8. Try filling in the rest of the chart yourself and do this as often as you can before you go completely mad. Not very easy is it ;) Check the answers yourself using the neck diagram on page 8. Page 10
13 Intervals Intervals are the distances between notes. Understanding the intervallic relationships between notes will help you understand chords, harmony and many more advanced areas (such as modes). This is not immediately practical on the guitar, but we will be putting them to use later. The reason we are looking at them now is because the exercises will also help you memorise the key signatures we looked at in the last lesson. There are two types of intervals: Major and Perfect. Perfect intervals are natural and found in most ethnic music around the world. Major intervals are cultural and found in western music. Each type is treated slightly differently. Lets now look at a numbered C major scale. The first scale degree (1) is the root note. C D E F G A B C Perfect intervals are found: between the root note and itself (called a Perfect Unison), the root and the 4th scale degree (called a Perfect Fourth), the root and the 5th (Perfect Fifth), and the root and its octave (called, funnily enough, a Perfect Octave). Major intervals are found between the root and the 2nd degree (called a Major Second), the root and 3rd (Major Third), the root and 6th (Major Sixth), and the root and 7th (Major Seventh). That gives us the following intervals in a Major Scale: C to C Perfect Unison (U) C to D Major 2 nd (2) C to E Major 3 rd (3) C to F Perfect 4 th (4) C to G Perfect 5 th (5) C to A Major 6 th (6) C to B Major 7 th (7) C to C Perfect Octave (8ve) The fun begins when the top note is not found in the key of the lower note. Because the lowest note in all these examples is C - the scale tones are the scale tones of C Major scale. We always calculate intervals using the key of the lowest note. For all the exercises in this book, we assume that the first note is the lowest note. Both Major and Perfect intervals are called Augmented when the top note is a semitone higher (bigger/sharpened) than the scale tone of the key. For example, C to F is a Perfect Fourth, C to F# is an Augmented Fourth. C to A is a Major Sixth, C to A# is a Augmented Sixth. When the top note is a semitone lower (smaller/flattened) than the scale tone of the key, Major intervals become minor but Perfect intervals become Diminished. For example, C to B is a Major Seventh, C to Bb is a Minor Seventh. C to G is a Perfect Fifth, C to Gb is a Diminished Fifth. Page 13 2ff7e9595c
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