Welcome To Advanced Guitar Lessons Level 3

In Advanced Guitar Lessons Level 3 we are going to talk about music theory. A lot of guitar players don’t know how to read music. In order to study advanced theory, a background in reading music is extremely helpful. So we are going to make this as painless as possible. The first video will explain the staff and the notes on the staff. This is music reading 101.

Video 1

This next video explains more basic information. We cover half steps and whole steps. Next, we will locate middle C and we discuss the notes on the guitar. While this is basic stuff, you would be surprised to find that a lot of people who play guitar don’t know this. If you spend a little time learning this material it will pay off in the end, especially with your writing skills.

Video 2

In this next video, we talk about scale formulas. Intervals are defined and we talk about how the intervals got their names. Finally, we learn the major scale formula and apply it to the guitar.

Video 3

In this next video, we finish learning about interval names. We also learn how to read an interval chart. Next, we will use this chart to calculate scale formulas. We talk about scale formulas for diatonic scales and pentatonic scales. We also cover the 3 forms of minor scales which are Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor, and Natural Minor scales.

Video 4

Now that you know the scale formulas to the most common scales used in western music, you may be wondering what do these scales look like. Head on over to the Guitar Scale Guide Advanced and take a look. You can also print out those scales. PDF charts of all these scales are provided. There is also a collection of background tracks that will allow you to try these scales out. You can hear what they sound like over a musical composition. How To Create Guitar Solos is a video series that will teach you how to use the diatonic scale structures.

In this next video, we learn about chord structures. Most Chords are built using thirds. There are two types of thirds. A major third and a minor third, also known as a flat third. So we use thirds to construct chords. We will build major, minor, dominate 7th, major 7th, minor 7th, augmented, and diminished chords using thirds.

Video 5

Now we take this a step further. In this next video, we will build on what we already know. We will add another third and build 9th chords. There are 4 types of 9th chords covered. We talk about Major 9, Minor 9, dominate 9, and add 9 chords. We also cover suspended chords. Often this chord is abbreviated as SUS. There are two types that are common. There is a sus 2nd and a sus 4th.

Video 6

In this next video, we cover power chords. Power chords are well-known in all the rock styles of music. With a little distortion, these chords create the rhythm sections of many popular tunes. Most power chords are made using two notes. Technically it takes three notes to make a chord, but sometimes the distortion that is blended with the tones of these chords creates the illusion of a full chord.

Power chords are pretty neutral. They are not major, minor, 7th, sus, or 9th chords. Power chords are made from the root note and the 5th note. Those notes are found in all those chord types I just listed. By alternating the 5th note while we continue to play the root note in the power chord, we can come up with a melodic structure that will give the power chord definition. So now we will discuss power chord alterations.

Video 7

Now we will cover adding a bass line to your power chord alterations. we will also talk about using octaves in place of power chords. We also discuss using octaves in our guitar solos.

Video 8

Now we will talk about using intervals in our guitar solos. There are 4 types we discuss. major 3rd, minor 3rd major 6th, and minor 6th.

Video 9

Finally, we are going to wind things up using the interval chart to transpose keys.

Video 10

Recap

In video 3 we learned one octave of the major scale. We also learned how to move it around. By putting a number in place of the note for every scale degree we discover a system we can use to transpose music. For example. If we are playing in the key of C and we play the following chords C, F, Am, G. We will recognize a pattern in that major scale from video 3. If we just take the root notes of those chords and replace those with numbers we see that the scale degrees of those notes are 1, 4, 6, and 5.

Let’s say we want to transpose this to the key of D. By sliding the scale we learned in video 3 up to the D note and playing the same scale pattern we see that the scale degrees reveal the chords in the key of D. these chords are D, G, Bm, and A. So the simple major scale pattern we learned in the third video can be a tool that can be used to transpose songs into other keys.