Guides
Guides
Written guides to the things that actually get in the way when you practise – with fretboard diagrams, not theory in a vacuum.
Basics
To the overview How many notes are there, actually? The starting point before scales and chords → There are only 12 notes, and every song is a selection from them. Where scales, chords and melodies come from, before you touch a single shape.- Intervals: the 12 feelings between two notes → Why an interval tells you more than a half step, how the bright and the dark version sound, and where all 12 sit inside one octave.
- Chords: how intervals turn into a background → Major, minor, diminished, augmented and the sevenths come out of two switches. Know the intervals and you stop collecting shapes.
Scales
To the overview Guitar scales: which ones you need, and in what order → Major, minor, pentatonic and blues on the fretboard: what each one is good for, how they come out of one another, and which to learn first.- The major scale on guitar: the measure for everything else → The major scale built from intervals: why it is the measure for everything else, where the three positions sit, which chords come out of it.
- The minor scale on guitar: the same notes, a different root → Natural minor has the same notes as its relative major. Which interval tips over, where the positions sit, and what harmonic minor is for.
- The minor pentatonic on guitar: five positions across the whole neck → The minor pentatonic is the minor chord plus two notes. Why the 2 and the ♭6 are missing, where the five positions sit and how to practise.
- The blues scale on guitar: one note more than the pentatonic → The blues scale on guitar: which note is added to the minor pentatonic, where it sits in each position, why it is a passing tone and how to practise it.
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