Hey, how are you doing? Justin here.
For a little bit of music theory We're gonna talk a bit about
Chords in the key - what that means. But a really simplified version,
if you wanna get much more into this
I'd recommend that you go and check out my music theory course.
Because stepping up to it is a lot easier than kinda jumping in.
Now, the basic idea when we're talking
about Chords in the key is that
all of the notes in the chords
all come from
the notes of one scale
one major scale usually
Let's talk about major scales: there are
minor scales and other kind of
approaches to this but
for now you can say
You look at all of the notes in a major scale
and we can combine those notes
to form chords and all of those chords
that use only those notes in that scale
would be considered:
In the key of - that scale.
So, we're talking today about C Major
C Major scale, the same scale
the major scale that we've been working on
in the lesson.
All of the chords in the key of C will
only use notes from the C major scale.
The chords in the key of C
there are 3 major chords
they are: C, F and G
and there are 3 minor chords
and they are: Dm, Em and Am.
So, anytime you see those chords together
and no other chords you're definitely in the key of C.
You do occationally in the real world
find some chords that are borrowed
from other keys and popped in there.
We're not gonna get into all that sort of stuff just now.
What I want you to do is to have a go of
working out what the notes are in all of
those chords and checking them
with the scale that you've just learnt.
So, if you think of
a C major scale
-that we've been working on-
and you imagine that I've left dots behind
where all my fingers have just been.
All of those dots are the dots that we
would look at for our C major chords.
The chords in the key of C.
There is the C, all of these notes,
we can take - there.
D minor
again - they are all contained
E minor
F - again
G
A minor
There is actually another chord,
B dim or Bm7b5, but no one ever uses it.
So I've just left it out for the purpose of this lesson.
And then we're back to C.
See, you can see all of the notes,
in all of those chords,
all come from the C major scale.
So they fit perfectly together.
If you are going to improvise a solo,
you could use the C major scale
over any one or and combination of those
chords from the key of C.
Like, for example: Californication
if you were to improvise a solo on that,
you could use the C major scale and it'll sound fantasic.
There are many, many songs
that only use chords in the key
that are really good fun to solo over
they are really good fun as learning vehicles for
you to jam with your friends were one person plays the chords,
the other one plays a lead line.
We're gonna be getting more into that in the coming weeks.
This week I just wanted to sow the seed,
the idea of this theory,
this idea of chords in a key.
If you happen to be a songwriter and
you're interested in getting into songwriting
it's a very very good place to start
is looking at the chords in the key
- in this case in the key of C -
and trying to put them together
and have a listen to what they sound like.
The more familiar you get with the
sounds of the chords in the key,
the more likely you are to recognize them
when you hear a song on the
hear a song on the radio,
when you hear a song on spotify
Ehm, here we go, that sounds like that chord progression.
You might be able to find it on the guitar more easily.
So, having an awareness of this idea of chords in the key
and how they, how the chords in the key
relate to a major scale
which you should be able to see pretty clearly
from the major scale lesson that we have done today
and leaning where the notes are on the neck
which we've done a little bit of a look at as well.
If you wanted to you might be able to
maybe write out what the notes are
in the different chord; that would be kind of an interesting exercise wouldn't it?
But I'll leave that one for you.
If you wanna explore it more, do go an check out the music theory site.
Music theory part of the website I should say
And also there is plenty more very soon.
Take care of yourselves - bye.