Guitar Music Theory

Guitar music theory is not your top priority when you start learning to play the guitar. But, at the back of your head, you probably know that you absolutely need to learn more of it. You just know that it’ll help you become a better guitar player, and that will also make you an even more well rounded songwriter.

So what’s so important with guitar music theory? It all has to do with improvisation. It all goes back to what we learned about scales in school. There are major and minor scale patterns for everything in music. They form the basis of everything you do on the guitar, so it makes sense that if you want to do something, you have to learn those scales and apply them creatively.

When you listen to a piece of music, you’ll notice that the melody goes from A to G, or from B to D, or even, in some cases, from A to E. Why? It’s because each chord change requires a new way to count, or place your fingers on the fretboard. In the same way, if you were to go from G to D, or from B to E, what’s important is where your fingers are placed on the fretboard. If you place your fingers on the E string, for example, instead of on the A string, the chord won’t sound like it should. Instead, you would place your fingers on the D string, or the A string.

It also helps to take into consideration that guitar tabs, which are written out as lines and segments of numbers, actually tell us a lot about the melody. They give us the root notes and the chords of each segment, and the notes they go to and how to place your fingers on the fretboard to get those notes. This is why music notation, the actual notes you see on the fretboard when you’re playing the music, can be difficult for new guitar players. New ideas don’t always fit in with what you’re used to.

The most popular music notation systems are the tablature and the chromatic scale. The tablature lists the chord and the notes for each one, while the scale has several notes that sound if played together, as a single piece of music. This is very useful for beginners, who can quickly memorize several notes and songs at once, when they’re learning guitar at first. The basic guitar chord and the guitar tab versions of these chords are almost identical in sound between the two. The biggest difference is probably in how many notes are on each line.

To review: the basic guitar chord is created by playing the root note (the top note in a C major scale) and one or more notes on the second level, called sharps. A sharp is a sharpened note that sounds two notes higher than the root. So, for instance, if you play the root note (C), an E flat, and a C sharp, this is an E major scale.