Personally I love just grabbing my guitar… and noodling.
I’ll pick a key, whatever strikes my interest at that moment, and start noodling just for enjoyment… and often times, I’ll end up coming up with a cool progression or something that could be turned into a song.
This lesson will give a few of the nuts and bolts that can help you build a framework for creating progressions or songs on your own. You need to know what guitar chords work together, and you need to know what scale you’re working with, and you need to have some idea of how those work so that you can use them to start getting creative.
Today’s topic is the difference between major and minor chords. Perhaps you’ve noticed this before, but the difference is only a single note! That note is the 3rd. The other two notes in the chord are the root note, and the fifth -- those notes are the same regardless of whether you’re making a major chord or a minor chord. So the difference between major and minor is quite minor, really.
Anyways, this is a handy bit of theory to know, but even better is seeing the thirds pattern and how it can be used on the guitar. Major thirds and minor thirds are some of the sweetest sounding harmonies you’ll hear, so it really pays to learn how to use those intervals on your guitar.
If you’re not familiar with the scale degrees, and how they can be used like numbers, you might want to checkout my lesson on Unlocking I IV V, as it explains that in detail.
This video is really just an introduction to thirds, but stay tuned -- I’ll be doing more on this topic in future lessons.
In this video lesson you’ll learn how you can cut your bar chords down to size, and still get a great result.
The cool thing about this is that it takes a lot less finger strength to make the chord (you’re not actually barring it), and in addition, you’re getting a totally different and unique sound now from the something you already knew!
The basic idea here is that you take the exact same notes you were playing in whatever bar chords you’re using, but now you just hack the chord in half and only play the top 3 or 4 strings on your guitar.
This really gives the chord a higher sound, which can really help cut through the rest of the band, and it can stand out very nicely from another guitar player who is using the same chords, but perhaps is playing them as open chords instead.
Practice these two patterns -- the major pattern and the minor pattern, and get used to thinking about the root note being on the first string instead of on the 6th string.
The other pattern in there that I realized I didn’t show too clearly is just an open D form, but moved up. The root note for that one comes off the second string.
This one is a very basic, very quick little lesson -- probably relevant only for the real beginners out there, but understanding which note is your root note in the chord is quite important.
In general, the root note is going to be the lowest note in your chord, in terms of pitch. Definitely this is the case in all of the open chords and bar chords. Later on, you’ll get into more advanced chords, and probably see some inversions and things…. but don’t worry about that for now!
The reason you need to know where the root note is, is so that you don’t strum anything lower than that note! If you’re constantly just strumming all six strings, your playing will sound muddy and not very precise, or even musical!
So once you’ve watched this video lesson, and you understand where the root notes on your chords are located, pay attention to that while you’re practicing. Take the time to think about it, and make sure you’re only strumming notes within each chord that are supposed to be there!
