Hi guys my name's Andy
and in this lesson I'm taking you through what a key is in music
why its useful to you
and also i'm gonna be talking about the key of G
so a key in music
is a way of knowing which chords go together
and it can be seen as a family of chords
or a palate of chords
like a painters palate
and its also a way of knowing which melodic notes
are going to work over those chords
now as a quick
kind of guide as to
a really quick inclination into what the key of a song might be
the key of the song is normally the first chord
the last chord
and the most common chord
that crops up in your song or chord sequence
so if for example my song is in the key of G
G will probably start the chord sequence
it might not end every time
but the song may end on a G
and G will also probably be
the commonest chord in the song
or happen for the most amount of time
but none of those things have to be the case for a song to be in the key of G
in fact a song could be kind of in the key of G
but not even have a G chord in it
and how is that the case?
well its because thats not the reason a song is in that key
it just tends to be that that sounds good and that gets done the most
but its the other chords in the song
that actually dictate what the key is
and those chords are
when we take the key of G as an example
because G is a very guitar friendly key
if you've been playing guitar for a number of months or weeks
you'll know that probably already
we have G
as our first chord
A minor
i'm just gonna be demoing these chords
but I will have these chord shapes available
to view
in the lesson notes that accompany this lesson
so this second ones A minor
then we have a B minor which i'm playing a B minor 7
kinda like this
so that
the majority of people can play it
theres another way of playing a B minor
which is kinda correct
but it would be the barre chord way of doing it
so i'm giving you guys the easier option
of either of them
we have a C
a D major as well
and finally an E minor
there are other chords that will crop up
in a song thats in the key of G
or there might even be fewer
a song might just stick to the major chords
G, C, or D
and if we take the example Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison
the main chord sequence in that song is G
to a C
G
And back to D again
and the only other chord that happens in the whole song
is gonna be an E minor
so we have these common chords
that happen, and in that chord sequence
G C
G and D
G is the first one and the most common
and G would end the song
if it didn't fade out
thats just as a quick inclination
of what a key is
But why is that useful to a beginner or improving guitarist?
well if you know the key of a song
you'll know how to play over it
for one, and we will be covering that
in a later lesson in this group of five for true fire
but
also you can just start to be one of those guys
who can just pick up the guitar and play
you can play chords that sound good together
rather then them being totally random
and you put those with the strumming patterns that we covered in the first two lessons
and you're coming up with something that sounds good
and it doesn't have to be that one song that you play to death
or another song thats kinda difficult
and you're not yet comfortable with
and we are learning the mechanics, the underlying workings
and why things sound good, why certain chord sequences get used over and over again
and there are those well trodden chord sequences
and i'll give you a couple of examples
but the theory goes
that you could pick any of those chords that i've just listed
G
a minor
B minor 7 or just a standard B minor
C
D and E minor
you could put them in any order
and it will sound good
thats not to say that any other chord that you throw in there would sound bad
it just might, if you went from totally random chords
to a totally random chord
just kept going
you are probably gonna run out of chords
and it is probably gonna sound very random
but this is kind of
working out which chords fit together really well
as a starting point for you to experiment with
and then see those things happen in real songs
but also see how they are twisted to make it a bit more interesting
we have the common chord sequences that get used an awful lot
and its best to start off with a bar of each chord
for now
most songs have four bars
that tend to get repeated, Brown Eyed Girl
which I mentioned a second ago is a great example
bar of G
a bar of C
A bar of G
and a bar of D
put it in the first most common strumming pattern we looked at before in lesson 1
And we get
not only some nice sounding guitar
It is Brown Eyed Girl
okay
but take the chord sequence on its own and it doesn't have to be that song
I could change the strumming pattern
to the other one that we were doing
the second most common strumming pattern ever
and it sounds different
and it sounds like different songs
and thats what we are gonna be doing with my second chord sequence
which will be written on the lesson notes as well
but thats gonna be a bar of G
a bar of D
bar of E minor
and then a bar of C
they are the four most common chords in the key of G
in the most common order
and these you can do an awful lot of songs with as well
i'm gonna go for the second most common strumming pattern ever to give us a bit more time on each chord
so that would be
1 and 2 and
3 and four and
and its best to take those four chords
and just repeat them
because thats what real songs do
if you haven't done already
I really recommend checking out the Axis of Awesome four chord songs
where they take those four cords that i've just played
and just go through about a hundred songs
just playing the chorus, or one line of each song
and all the melodies fit over that same chord sequence
but here we look at the mechanics underneath that
and as I say, in the fourth lesson in this series of five
we are gonna be covering how to play over it
with quite an easy scale
and start you guys improvising and making melodies over it
so this is perfect, kinda jamming material
for any genre
to be turned into any kind of music
this is just, its the same chords that can get used
in so many styles of music
and it depends what you do with them
so we're just doing the most common things
so its gonna sound like at the moment
standard pop songs
for example rock riffs that we've done before
if for example you add a little bit of muting with that sequence
you can make it sound a little bit more classic rock
and that strumming pattern will also be written out on the lesson notes
but as I say we've got that common order, so common order number 1
G
C
G D
For a bar of each
and then your four chord song
order
for a bar of each
G D Eminor
and C
and you can play for a bar of each with any strumming pattern you want to go for
and it will always work
you can swap out any chords
with any from the key of G
that i've listed earlier in this video
and it will still work
and guess what, even the notes we are going to play over that
in the next video
it will still work even in a different order
now of course if its all kind of planned out
before hand and you are really familiar with these chords
and done this before
you can tie together the chords and the melody even more
but in the early days
the theory goes that it will just work and it needs to be experimented and tried
so we've got those two recommended chord sequences
and from there i'd like you guys
to write out four bars
so five lines down with four spaces in between them
on a sheet of paper
dont worry I've already done this for you its in the lesson notes
and we're gonna be writing down
one of those chords for the reccomended one
in each bar
you can put two in each bar if you want
but thats gonna make it harder for your changes so
its up to you how challenging you want to make your chord sequence
you know, some people might want to stay away from the B minor because its new to them
and thats cool 'cause it doesn't always get used
but you can
but you can do any any order and it will kinda still sound good
together t will still work as guitar
but
if you stick to those minor chords
really often
your song tends to sound quite sad
and if you don't start on the G it doesn't sound started or finished
its got a weird flow, and you can come back to those two
reccomended chord sequences that I gave you
and you can see and hear how they flow and how they
and how you can use melodies over top of them
and it would work a lot better
so as I say I really encourage you
to
take the pre made sheets that are available on the website
and write one chord
from each of the palates that are available
and have a go at playing it
you can just do these chords in your mind which the chords are and go for each of them
but if you write it down
you can reflect on how that went
and then have another go at changing it slightly
and you will remember what you have done and play it better
and then over those chord sequences that you create
with any lesson for going over those
and getting used to this idea of improvising
but we tend to have the rhythm guitar down first
to make the improvising idea work a little better
and as I say with those chord sequences
play with any strumming pattern you know
or you can use the two most common strumming patterns
that were in the previous video
thats it for this lesson, hope that
is something that works for you and you see the benefit of
'cause theres huge leaps of benefits
that can be felt
other then that I hope to see you again, and check out the future videos!
Subtitles by the Amara.org community