Ear Fusion Guitar Lessons - How To Play By Ear
Major
vs. minor
As far as chords are concerned, we will go into more
depth a little later in this book. For now, let’s look at how we
refer to major and minor scales. We’ve already learned about major
scales, their intervals and how to derive them starting from any
note so that we can play any key. If we recall that the intervals
for the major scale follow the pattern of two whole steps, one half
step, three whole steps, one half step as you learned from figure 6.
Now let’s look at the intervals of a minor scale. The minor scale
goes as follows – 1 whole step, 1 half step, 2 whole steps, 1 half
step and 2 whole steps. I hope you still recall what whole and half
steps are. If you do not understand this, you may need to review
some earlier sections of this booklet. Anyhow, you can see that
instead of the pattern we see in figure 10 (C Major):
FIGURE 10
You see that the C minor scale would look like figure
11…
FIGURE 11
This may seem confusing…but bare with it for a moment.
Let’s see what would happen if we just took the notes that A minor
would yield. From A, the first note would be a whole step up which
would is B. From B, the next note would be just a half step up,
which is C…the rest of the notes would be D, E, F and G. Notice that
there are no sharps or flats…just like C Major. So this means that A
minor has all the same notes as C Major. Why then would we have an A
minor if there is already a C Major with all the same notes? This is
because of the root note (A in this case). Major scales and chords
tend to have a straightforward and happy sound. Minor scales and
chords tend to be more dark and dissonant. You’ll be able to hear
the difference soon when we cover chords. Any ways, if you’ll notice
that the A note itself is one and a half steps (three frets) down
from the C note in the twelve note pattern. Look at figure 12…
FIGURE 12
Figure 12 shows us the C Major scale and how you skip frets
according to whole steps and half steps. Notice if you start from
the A note and go through the cycle from there, you come up with the
minor scale pattern. So you can see exactly how a major scale
relates to a minor scale. We are just showing you here the
comparison of an A minor to C Major. The same comparison applies to
any key. So if you were playing in the key of G Major, you would
also be playing the same notes in E minor. E is one and a half steps
down from G…just as A is one and a half steps down from C.
Now you know that if you’re playing a song in the key of
C Major that you could use the notes from A minor and vice versa.
The difference would be that the root note of the song would be
either A or C, making it sound more dark or more bright and
happy…respectively. Also notice that the note A is the 6th
note in the C Major scale and in figure 11…of course the C minor
scale shown is also the same notes that would be in Eb Major.
Next - Lesson #12 -
Pentatonic Scales
