[AX7221]

Fong:

A piece of you post reminded me of a quote a guitarist told me, it sounded like you were touching on it but I didnt know what to quote b/c a few of you sentences approached it: "There comes a time when you stop playing scales and chords and you just play"

The paint by number analogy could work, but the concepts are necessary. Like if a guitarist wanted to improvise and he no idea of the concepts just say what scale he's in then I'd view it as someone throwing darts blind folded. The diatonic scales aren't indepent entities that just happen to have the same pattern, then have the same pattern and they just happen to have different harmonies. To simply look at whether or not is has any sharps or flats is purley academic, if the root was a sharp or flat would you then consider if it had any naturals?

To look at a specific chord to explain theory I think is too complicated, here's my take (I have 2). The greeks came up with a harmony, the perfect 5th as we know it today which they considered the best harmony. They also came up with the minor and major thirds which they also liked. They saw that if you took a note, lets designate it our root, and figured out which note created a major third (higher in pitch), then if you went a minor third up from that you got a third note, and the harmony b/w the root and the third note is a perfect 5th! And so now we have our major chord. The same can be done in a different order, if you go up a minor third you can a second note, and if you go up a major third you get a third note, the harmony b/w the root and the third note is a perfect fifth, which is a minor chord. The greeks also figured out that if you have a pattern of notes that go like this: ...w, w, h, w, w, w, h, w, w, h, w, w, w, h, w, w, h, w, w, w, h, w, w, h, w, w, w, h... (I was tought using w=wholestep=semitone and h=halfstep=semitone, so its what i'm used to) up and down the spectrum of human hearing you can create a 7 note scale where 6 of the notes of the scale are roots for either a major or minor chord! This was quite the achievement in my book, and I think it is very very very very very very very very very very easy to overlook it as such. Anyways, where do you start the scale, it don't matter (it actually does but you need to know what the scale is before you know what it sounds like).

Aeolian: w, h, w, w, h, w, w
Locrian: h, w, w, h, w, w, w
Ionian: w, w, h, w, w, w, h
Dorian: w, h, w, w, w, h, w
Phrygian: h, w, w, w, h, w, w
Lydian: w, w, w, h, w, w, h
Mixolydian: w, w, h, w, w, h, w

Also, if you go to this link you can see what each scale looks like on the fretboard. You will see that if you had A Aeolian (which is synomous for A Minor, Ionian=Major), and you went w, h, w, w, h, w, w to create the scale then after you took A# and went w, h, w, w, h, w, w it would be the exact same thing except each note is shifted up 1 fret. You would also see that B Minor is identical to the first except shifted up 2 frets. This will hold true for all every scale, if you learn what the shape is for a scale then you can shift is up and down the neck to match up with your key. (You would also see that there are more types of scales than you would care to know existed).

The other approach that i've heard (i think this is far fetched that someone had the foresight to actually do this, it works but I think it was done in retrospect, however it is a very nice elegence in music theory). I'm not sure exaclty how it's used, I know it can be used to determine how many sharps or flats are in a peice, but in terms of generating a scale, the only scale i could come up with is Lydian, and the circle of 4ths gave me Locrian, maybe someone else would be best at explaining that one...

That all good and well but somewhat useless. So one way to define a major or minor chord is by saying its a major third with a perfect fifth or a minor third and a perfect 5th respectively. Another way is to say a major chord is the first, third and fifth note of a major , scale, the a C major chord is the 1st, 3rd and 5th note or the C major scale or C, E and G. You can also define a minor chord as the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes or a minor chord, so an Am chord is A, C and E. The first definition is much more convincing(?) but the second is perfectly equivalent and much more practical.

Now we know what notes are in our chord, we just have to use 1 or more of each. If I played C and G then I'm not playing a major chord, im playing a fifth harmony. If i add in notes it would have a different name. When I D, I need to have 1 or more D, F# and A. Also I will use D as the lowest note, somewhat out of convention and somewhat out of taste. So my chord will look like this:
e 2
b 3
g 2
d 0
a x
E x

A is in a D chord, so this is also a D chord:
e 2
b 3
g 2
d 0
a 0
E x

So, I might try out this chord to see how it sounds. However this, as was talked about in this or a recent thread, is an inversion. This can be specifically called for if the chord was written as D/A. Which is a slash chord. In the above chord A is in the D chord, but that isnt necessary for a slash chord, such as D/B. So what I have taken so long to get at (in case you or someone else reading this wasnt aware of the previous stuff) is i have the freedom to play any notes I want to make a C chord I only need 1 or more C, E and G. The reason I went to such lenght is to me it all makes perfect sense and all fits together like a glove, its very helpful to understand it this way. One of the things I was planing on going into is you can learn 3 or 4 modes and befor ever hearing a fifth mode (this is impossible) you can figure out stuff about that mode based on already knowing the harmonies in the previous modes then seeing which harmonies are in that one. Basically what I'm saying is you can get by with the paint by numbers apporach as in no idea on note name, but knowing the concepts are an absolute must (not the history but what do these harmonies sound like, what do chord tones sound like, what happens if i play a chord tone then a non-chord tone then a chord tone then a non-chord tone then a chord tone then a non-chord tone all in succession (what happens is a very cool) and so on.)

Also I forgot to write it above, guitar I think is easier than keyboard in that you dont need to memorize 12 sets of notes for each scale, all you need to know is the shape. And with guitar unlike keyboard harmonies and intervals always appear the same anywhere on the guitar (assuming 4 halfsteps b/w g and b is taken into account), like on keyboard visually the distance between keys and the size of an interval is different, its something that has to be memorized.)

done