CLICK HERE FOR A VIDEO INTRODUCTION
Welcome to this absolutely FREE section of the High Country Guitar website. In this section you’ll find a surprisingly comprehensive and easy-to-understand music theory tutorial, designed specifically for guitarists–it doesn’t matter what kind of music you want to play. This isn’t some classroom music theory course–it’s a look at the concepts and patterns that are operating in virtually ALL of the music we all listen to every day.
Scroll down to read a little more about it, or just dive right into lesson one.
Why “practical music theory?”
I refer to it as “practical music theory” because music theory is a big and complex field. In fact, one can actually receive an advanced college degree in music theory. But the fact is that unless you are interested in jazz, classical, or some other kind of avant-garde music, there’s a lot about music theory that will never really affect you. But there’s a much more basic level of music theory that is reasonably easy to understand, and that is operating all the time in the music we listen to every day. This PRACTICAL level of music theory will help you:
- Open up creative possibilities on the guitar for composition and improvisation
- Know what to play immediately in all kinds of musical contexts
- Communicate clearly with the other musicians you play with
I often make an analogy with math. There are many different branches of mathematics, and people can study them all the way up through the PhD level. But the fact is that most of us can get through life just fine only knowing the basics–add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Music theory is exactly the same–it can be taken to a very complex level, but most guitarists just need to know a few basic things about chords, scales, and chord progressions in order to have a working understanding of how music operates.
ENTER
The HCG Practical Music Theory Tutorial
Or skip to a lesson:
Lesson 1: The ABC’s
Lesson 2: The Major Scale
Lesson 3: Chord Construction 101 (triads)
Lesson 4: Chord Construction 102 (7th chords)
Lesson 5: Chord Scales (triads)
Lesson 6: Chord Scales (7th chords)
Lesson 7: Motion in 4ths
Lesson 8: I – IV – V progressions
Lesson 9: other chord progressions