Re: Chord Construction

Tremendous posts.
I have to reread them alot,
like usual.

"Stephen Calder" <calder9@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:483cad8d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
stolarskin wrote:
So I use the major scale
with just these notes.
C D E F G A B C
E7 notes E,B,G# which I can eventually
figure out if I sit and count the notes.
I'm not at a point where I can
remember all the fretboard notes immediately.

So with the E7 I'm counting
E as root. So it's 3.
Then B, so it's 7.
Then G# is confusing.
The G is 5 in the scale but the
chord uses G#.

Okay, you've made a good start and it's time to clear up a couple of
things.

First, E7 is not a chord in the key of C. To put it another way, you can
use it in the key of C but it does contain a note (G#) that is not part of
the C scale, as you discovered. When playing this chord in the key of C we
have temporarily moved out of that key into the key of A minor (or A
major, depending on the song and on the chord following the E7 chord.

Second, a seventh chord always has four notes and the additional note is
the seventh of the (root note) scale flattened by a semitone, called the
flat 7 or b7. Look at the open E7 chord and you will find it contains a D
note as well as the other three you mentioned.

Third, when looking at a particular chord you must forget which key it's
in and look solely at the scale (usually major but sometimes minor) that
is formed from the root note of the chord.

In this case, the root is E and we need to analyse the chord based on the
E major scale, not the C scale, even though the song may be in C. So we
need to know the notes in the E major scale.

First write out the scale notes, starting with E, but without the sharps
and flats. It's a rule that you can always write the letters in alphabet
order (with A following G) and then add the sharps and flats, in any
scale. Here we go:

E F G A B C D E

Where are the sharps or flats? We know that in any major scale, there is
just a semitone (one fret) between notes 3 and 4 and just a semitone
between notes 7 and 8 (the octave). The note below the root in a major
scale is always a semitone lower.

Since all the other notes in a major scale are two semitones (two frets or
one tone) apart we can now work out where the other sharps are. E to F is
one semitone, but we need to go up two semitones from the root to get the
second scale note, which means we need an F#.

E F# G# A B C# D# E
1 2 3 3 5 6 7 8


Now we can start to assign numbers to the notes in an E7 chord.

E 1
G# 3
B 5
D b7

There are two open position E7 chords on the guitar:

1) E7 020100
2) E7 022130


Chord (1) above is made up of these E-major scale notes, in order (where 1
is the root or E):


1-5-b7-3-5-1


Chord (2) above is made up of these E-major scale notes, in order:


1-5-1-3-b7-1





--
Stephen
Ballina, Australia


.

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