Basic Music Theory for Guitar

Introduction

Many musicians these days have been wanting to play by ear. They wonder, how can some people listen and know what comes next. There is actually no secret to this. Some may say that it is by experience. But every ‘experienced’ musician who play by ear MUST have some sort of foundation. This foundation is what gives the musician an expectation of what comes next in the phrase, or even to create harmonious music itself. The foundation is none other than BASIC MUSIC THEORY.

Let’s not talk about jazz, blues, or experimental music, but the very fundamentals of classical theory, where Rock and Pop music is built upon.

Many will say, “Nah, I use tabs or numbers.” Or even, “I’ve memorised one-thousand-and-one chord patterns.” Well, do you know which chord comes before which chord, or which note comes before which note? This is where the basic theory comes into play. You do not want to be able to play music only when you have the tabs, numbers, or chords. You just want to listen, play and enjoy it!

Here, I’m going to start with the fundamentals of music. Do pardon me if my terms aren’t correct, as I’m more of a practical musician, and not a music scholar. J Hence, I’m not going to go into reading music staves, but more on the practical side.

Notes and Scales, Part 1 – Understanding the notes in music

This is the basic that every aspiring musician should know. I’m going to talk about the basics of modern music. Figure 1 is a ‘C Major Scale’, which are ALL the ‘white keys on the piano’. This is also where you get the DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, TI, DO in the key of ‘C’.

 

Above depicts a 2-octave scale where the note C¹ (DO¹) is 1-octave lower than note C² (DO²) and note C³ (DO³) is 1-octave higher than C² (DO²). Every octave has the same amount of notes. The only difference is the pitch – higher octave = higher pitch; lower octave = lower pitch.

 

Figure 2 shows a chromatic scale (all the notes). The ‘#’ (sharps) and ‘b’ (flats) are already there, just that they are not used in the C Major Scale. Basically, a sharp note (i.e. C#) has a corresponding flat (i.e. Db). They have the same pitch (i.e. C# = Db; D# = Eb; F# = Gb; G# = Ab; A# = Bb). These sharps and flats are the ‘black keys on the piano’. There is nothing in between ‘E’ and ‘F’; ‘B’ and ‘C’. Why is that so? I don’t have the answer either. As it is not important, let’s not bother about it.

In conclusion for Part 1, we can see that there are actually eight (8) notes to complete an octave (C¹ to C²; and C² to C³ and so on) depicted in Figure 1. And there are 12 notes in total, C to B as circled above in Figure 2.