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Lessons From The Book ‘Open Chords Made Easy’

I’m going to release a bunch of lessons on this blog from the book ‘Open Chords Made Easy‘.

The book includes a collection of 23 guitar pieces, written to help students work through different chord progressions and strumming patterns. The pieces of music are really only one part of the book though. The other part is the theory and explanations on how to play chords and how to strum.

I figure that the theory side of things would be a great thing to include on this blog, as it contains a lot of fundamental lessons on rhythm and practice. The lessons will be adapted and modified slightly to fit the style of this blog, but they will be more or less direct lessons from the blog.

This page will serve as a sort of index that will contain links to all the lessons in the series. The links will be updated as the lessons are added.

Why The Major Scale Is The Master Scale

by Genaaron Diamente

I have written extensively about major scales and the importance of them on this site already. From that end, there’s no need to reexplain what’s already been explained. The purpose of this lesson is to demonstrate how the major scales is in a sense the ‘master scale’.

If you’re not sure what a major scale is. Read the lesson on major scales. Also, this lesson is a sort of follow on from the following lessons:

Major Scales And Keys

One of the most obvious reasons why major scales are so important is that they determine the notes in any given key. What are the notes in the key of D? The same notes that are in the D major scale? Which scale do we use to figure out the notes in the key of B? The B major scale.

By knowing which notes are in different major scales, we know which notes are in different keys.

Using Intervals To Build Scales

by Genaaron Diamente

I have written extensively on this site about scales. Scales form the basis for a whole range of music theory, from building chords, to composition, to soloing.

They are very important.

What we’re going to do in this lesson is explore the concept of scales, and use our knowledge of intervals and the fretboard to construct them. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of intervals, read the lessons in the links above.

Unlocking The Fretboard With The Musical Alphabet

by Genaaron Diamente

This lesson is a follow-on from the lesson on basic intervals. In that lesson, we explored the concept of tones and semitones. If you’re unsure of what tones and semitones are, read the lesson here. In summary, a semitone is an interval of one fret and a tone is an interval of two frets.

Basic Intervals on Guitar – Tones And Semitones

by Genaaron Diamente

In this lessons, we’re going to explore basic intervals on the guitar. This lesson will be pretty basic, but it will allow us to dive into more complex concepts, such as using intervals to build scales and unlocking the notes along the fretboard.

What Is An Interval?

An interval is really just the distance between two notes, measured in pitch. One of the advantages of the way that the guitar is set out is that it is very easy to visualise intervals. Because of the nature of using frets as reference points, it’s quite easy to relate to intervals in terms of frets. Let’s do some examples using Semitones.

The Major Blues Scale on the Guitar – CAGED Positions and Theory

by Genaaron Diamente

In this lesson, we’re going to look at the Major Blues scale. In the previous lesson, we explored the Minor Blues scale and discussed why it is arguably the most popular scale for guitarists.

The Major Blues scale is also a very useful scale, but it is not used as often as the Minor Blues scale. The Minor Blues scale seems to work over most chords including major chords and minor chords. The Major Blues however, only really works over Major chords, because it contains a ‘natural 3’, which clashes with the ‘b3’ of minor chords.