Assistance from a Guitar Player

[Galant]

This one goes out to the Hexus guitarists, I'm in need of some help.

I have a friend who's learning guitar, doing well, and has even written several of his own songs. The dude really works hard at it as it doesn't seem to come easily to him at all but he loves it. I'm a little bit of a singer and sometimes we're sort of jamming together but we come across a tune that's out of my range one way or the other. At present his only method for adjusting is the use of a capo, and when I've spoken about playing in another key it's left him clueless. He has no musical education whatsoever and so I've tried to explain what keys are and how learning to be able to know and play in different keys would be handy but not with much success, not least because I'm not a guitar player and so I don't understand the practicalities involved in switching keys on a guitar.

Does anyone have any tips or suggestions in explaining about using keys on a guitar?

Cheers!

[Zak33]

/Out ofdepth but intrigued beyond belief

[DanceswithUnix]

Speaking as someone who self taught Guitar as a kid and went on to do music 'O' level (and fail, but heck it got me out of PE lessons )...

I hate to say it but I think you only really get to understand key changes if you try your hand at keyboards and learning some classical music composition. I kind of went a half way house, and did some classical guitar lessons which helped my theory and gave me some new fingering techniques.

Most guitar players learn through reading "tablature" music with grids that show left hand positioning for a named chord. You generally don't know or care which individual notes you are playing, so the link from the set of notes in the chord to a set of notes in a scale is just alien until you start reading from a stave.

[Galant]

Speaking as someone who self taught Guitar as a kid and went on to do music 'O' level (and fail, but heck it got me out of PE lessons )...

I hate to say it but I think you only really get to understand key changes if you try your hand at keyboards and learning some classical music composition. I kind of went a half way house, and did some classical guitar lessons which helped my theory and gave me some new fingering techniques.

Most guitar players learn through reading "tablature" music with grids that show left hand positioning for a named chord. You generally don't know or care which individual notes you are playing, so the link from the set of notes in the chord to a set of notes in a scale is just alien until you start reading from a stave.

But what about at a simpler level, even by ear and dealing only with chords? My practical example would simply be how you can hear a lot of songs use key changes to lift at some point in the middle or at the end.

Understanding grouping of chords or notes into keys?

[DanceswithUnix]

But what about at a simpler level, even by ear and dealing only with chords? My practical example would simply be how you can hear a lot of songs use key changes to lift at some point in the middle or at the end.

Understanding grouping of chords or notes into keys?

There is a disjoint though:

You get 12 notes in an octave, choosing a key selects you a subset of 7 of those notes. In a classical instrument this is all very in-yer-face in the form of the key signature at the start of the stave that the music is read from. But in folk/rock guitar where you strum chords, you aren't really aware of which notes you are playing, so knowing if they are valid in a given key just doesn't make intuitive sense.

It works in the other direction as well, my school music teacher was a very talented musician and orchestral composer as well as a pretty good teacher, but he just couldn't get his head around guitar chords.

A quick Google found this which may help: http://www.guitarfriendly.net/transp...y-chord-chart/

[scaryjim]

I'd say a couple of theory lessons wouldn't go amiss tbh - it's kind of GCSE level stuff in terms of understanding the interaction of major and minor chords in a particular key.

if it's mostly chords he's looking at not lead work, then slapping a capo on is by far the easiest way of dealing with it, but limits you a little if you e.g. want to drop a song a tone, because then you're talking capo on the tenth fret and that's nasty to play.

So here's a little intro to chord theory that might help.

In any key (as DwU has alluded to) you get a limited set of notes to mess with. For chords, it's even more so, because each major key essentially has 3 major chords and 3 minor chords to play with.

So, first up identify the key you're playing in. I'm going to use C (major), because it means I don't have to worry about sharps and flats. Chord 1 (also called the tonic) in the key of C is ... C! From there, lay out the scale: in C that goes C D E F G A B

Now, your major chords are based on notes 1, 4 and 5 of the scale (these notes are called the "root" of the chord). In C, that gives you C, F and G. Your minor chords are rooted on 2, 3 and 6 - in C that's Dm, Em and Am. That's useful for composition, because it tells you which chords should sound right together. The chord based on the 7th note doesn't work - if you only use the natural notes you can't make a major or a minor chord from B!

The useful thing is that the same pattern applies to all major keys - you can start thinking of songs in terms of chord "numbers" rather than just the chord names. So you can change the key of a song (known as transposing) by working out which "number" a chord is, then translating that to a new key. So if your song is in C and uses the chords C, F and G, you can play it in A by instead using the chords A, D and E (if it's not obvious how that works try writing the scale out!). You can do fun complicated things beyond that, but for starting I'd recommend sticking to a few simple keys (C, D, G and A are pretty good choices) and then messing with a capo to fine tune the position. As he gets more confident he'll undoubtedly start exploring other options beyond that.

EDIT: and if I'd read DwU's link above I'd have known that it said pretty much exactly what I just spent ages typing