The Guitar Resource

This lesson will focus on how chords are made. Just like we had a formula of steps that we could use to make a scale (click here to see the lesson on building scales), we can also use a formula to make chords.

A basic chord is built on 3 notes. These 3 note chords are called “triads”. Other notes can be added to a tried to make “extensions”. This lesson will focus just on triads. Extensions will be covered in a later lesson.

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Today we will take a look at how to build a scale using certain notes on your guitar (or any other melodic instrument you play). Just like notes are the building blocks for scales, scales are the building block for composition. All chords are derived from scales. And in western music there is one scale that is more important than all the others: the Ionian scale, (most commonly called by the “Major” scale.)

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Now that you know what notes are and how they work (Click here to see the last lesson if you don’t), we can apply it to you guitar’s fretboard.

Now that we know the order of the notes, we can figure out what all the notes are on your guitar. Let’s start with the open strings (an open string is a string played open, without your hand fretting it at all. If you pick any one of your guitar strings without touching it, that an open string)

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Before you really start understanding guitar you need to know a little bit about how music works (commonly called Music Theory). I am going to explain what notes are and how they work. This will help you understand later lessons that go deep in into music theory.

Here is the definition of a note from dictionary.com: Note- a sign or character used to represent a tone, its position and form indicating the pitch and duration of the tone.

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