Understanding Musical Keys on the Guitar
Musical keys on the guitar are a topic that is often over complicated. They appear difficult so many beginners avoid learning them at all. In this article I want to explain how you can find the right chords that fit together in a given key using a little known method known as one, four, five. After reading this article and watching the example you’ll be ready to start figuring out keys on your own and a whole new world will open up to you on the guitar neck.
Musical Keys
The actual definition of a musical key is rather in depth. If a piece of music is in the Key of A then this states that it harmonically centred on the note A and makes use of those notes in the A major scale. Does it make use of all the notes? Maybe, but probably not. So what notes or chords should you be playing in the key of A major? That’s what we want to find out.
Choosing what chords to play
There’s an easy way to find out what chords you should be playing in each key. It starts by looking at the given scale for the key you want to play in. We’ll continue with the example from above in the key of A major. The pattern we’re going to use is known as I-IV-V or one-four-five. This takes the first, fourth and fifth notes from a given scale and combines them in a progression which sounds nice together. This same pattern shows up a lot in popular music and songs. Following our A major example let’s look at the A major scale: A B C# D E F# G# A
The first note is the A, the root note will always be the first note. Next we look to the four which is a D and the five which is an E. So the A chord, D chord and E chord will work really well together in the key of A.
Take a few minutes to watch the video below that goes along with this article. It will provide further explanation and another example to help you understand.
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Hey,
What you have explained is pretty easy to follow. But when you are a newbie to playing guitars, it is pretty confusing. I was in that position too.
Thanks for sharing this info.
Tal
I really like your explanation of musical keys. I found it to be very clear and easy to understand. I know that for myself, when I’ve written a song, I used to kind of “felt” my way around to the right chord without fully understanding why that was. In fact, I knew right away which two chords you would pair with this one. It’s nice to see why.
Great post!
Good point Peter. There is a sense that to get around the guitar, our ears really help a lot. Still scales add depth to our understanding.
Nice explanation. Too many people think that the key is defined by the note the song starts on.
Keep up th4e good work!
Well, i’ve been playing guitar for 15 years now, never knew a thing about music thoery, but now i’m starting to dig a little bit into music keys and scales, its helps me understand music better.
thanx for the vidéo, you brought me some clues !
Fine explanation. I would say that once you master the I-IV-V chord progression it would be time to get acquainted with other popular three or four chord progressions and than move on to more complicated once. As far as key being centered around the tonal center I would say that it is basically true, but often times you might encounter notes that do not belong to that scale but are atonal in fact, they are called passing tones.
I agree with you about the importance of understanding some basic theory. Thanks for providing this resource.
I’m in the business of better education for guitarists too. It an art form like any other though it used to be the case that kids learned guitar to get out of college … not into it !
Kevo