Guitar lessons for beginners and more

Major Triad Positions: One Way to Learn the Guitar Fretboard

Are you up for a challenge?

In a recent previous post, “Guitar Lessons: Scales & Learning the Guitar Fretboard,” I mentioned a few things you can put into practice to master the guitar fretboard. One of these suggestions was to learn your triads over the fretboard. Triads can help “connect the dots” for how individual notes across the fretboard interact and relate to one other.

Just a forewarning, this discussion needs some understanding of how guitar scales work. This might make more sense to more intermediate players. If you are just beginning, you will want to check out guitar scales explained.

What are triads?

A triad is a group of three notes played simultaneously. Triads are made up of one note with a major third and a perfect fifth above it. In plain speak, a triad is just a three note chord. There are different types of triads: major, minor, augmented, and diminished.

For now, we just want to talk about and focus on major triads. If we understand major triads, we can understand the other ones better. [...]

Guitar Lessons: Scales & Learning the Guitar Fretboard

It’s true that knowing guitar scales and learning the guitar fretboard is invaluable for taking your playing to the next level. A knowledge and understanding of your instrument opens up a wide variety of creative possibilities (e.g. soloing, improvising, etc.) for how you actually play your instrument.

In the past, we’ve explained the theory behind guitar scales and we’ve also took a more in depth look at how to build a major scale. This information is essential to your growth, but we’ve never really had any guitar lessons that look at the ways you can actually learn guitar scales and learn the guitar fretboard.

In this guitar lesson on scales, let’s look at a three ways you can learn guitar scales and learn the guitar fretboard [...]

3 Reasons Why You Should Know Some Music Theory

Music theory. You know, it’s the way we understand how music functions and operates. If we’re honest, it can be kind of boring. It can be dry and tedious. For some, it can just be plain scary and nonsensical.

I love playing music, but I can’t say I fall head over heels for music theory. Maybe you’re like me.

However, understanding a little bit of music theory for guitar can only help us and make us better off as guitarists and those who compose or write songs with the guitar. Here are some reasons why.

1.) You Gain a Better Understanding of the Guitar Fretboard.

Music theory helps us understand how the notes on a guitar fretboard connect into the music we play. When we have a little bit of understanding of theory, the notes on the fretboard aren’t just merely notes, but there is actually a connection between them, and they relate and function together in a particular way. If we understand how the notes connect and relate to one other, how much more easily can we then creatively express ourselves through our guitar playing.

2.) You Gain a Better Understanding For How Chords Function.

Different chords have different characteristics such as major, minor, augmented, or diminished. It’s in a better understanding of music theory that we understand how different chords are characteristic to different scales and how those chords function in those scales. In our understanding of music theory, we also learn how to [...]

Guitar Scale Anatomy: Theory Explained Behind Guitar Scales

I remember that when I was first beginning guitar I was hungry to learn the chords and lead lines of popular songs. While I learned a lot from this, after awhile, it left me feeling disappointed because I didn’t really know how to create and form my own cool lead lines, solos, licks, or whatever you want to call them.

I remember it being suggested to me that I learn guitar scales up and down the guitar neck so I could learn the guitar fretboard. I was told, if you know your guitar scales you can master the guitar fretboard. Maybe you too have been suggested or heard such a suggestion. So as a hungry beginner I started practicing different scale patterns.

The Main Problem

I practiced away, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to apply these scales I was learning into a song. I was learning a ton of patterns, but didn’t know what to do with them! In hindsight, I realize that in my attempt to learn the guitar fretboard, I was only learning guitar scale patterns, and I wasn’t learning how the notes, in those patterns, function together as a cohesive whole.

Perhaps you too have tried approaching learning the guitar fretboard by learning scale patterns, but quickly found that you didn’t have a clue as to how to piece those different patterns together. Guitar scale patterns are good, but not if [...]