Music Theory for Guitarists

Music theory is just a fancy term that means "how music works." The more "theory" you know, the more quickly you can weed out the sounds you don't like coming from your playing, and get to the sweet stuff.

Key Centers and Chords

Understanding music theory isn't so tough if you know how chords work. Learning about the cycle of fifths and how to read notation are important, but forming chords, moving them around and listening to them, and reading about them will give you a good foothold on theory.

But there's something even more fundamental than chords, in terms of understanding theory: key centers.

Western Music -- that's most of the music we hear and enjoy -- is made up of movement from one key center to another and movement inside a particular key center.

What's a key center? It's not complicated; it's totally intuitive. Here's what a key center is: get your guitar and play these chords in this sequence: C, F, G7, C. Then, play a C note. If you don't know where one is, play the first fret on string 2. That's a C.

You just established, made or created a key that is centered on the note C. In other words, C is the key center. It's a bit like home base; it's the tone that is the most stable.

Once your ear can pick out the key center for a section of music, and assuming you know a bit about what chords are possible in a particular key center, you'll often be able to guess pretty accurately what chords are coming up before you actually hear them.

To get a better sense of how key centers work, read through the Chord Exploring lessons, which talks about the building blocks of key centers.

After you get done with the Chord Exploring series, work through the Play Guitar by Ear lessons. These lessons get you to use your ear, combined with a bit of theory, to manipulate, manage and explore key centers.

• Chord Exploring
• Play Guitar by Ear

Guitar Chords Daily Tips

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“Recognizing the ii-V-I progression by ear will help you figure out tunes you don't have the tab for. When you hear a new key occur in a piece of music, chances are it's part of a ii-V7-I or some variation of it. Knowing that lets you work out a song's chords much quicker.”
(From Guitar Chords, pg. 18, "The ii-V-I")

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Guitar Chords (GC) builds your chops and helps you identify harmonies by ear. GC teaches you chord substitution; Jazz, Rock and Blues progressions; transposing songs; harmonizing melodies; fingerpicking, alternating bass, arpeggios, and much more.