Golden Rules of Music

What’s up guys! Bryan here - bit of a theory lesson today and I want to show you what I refer to as the golden rules of music!

When discussing certain types of music theory it can sometimes be easier to demonstrate on a piano keyboard, as the accidentals (sharps and flats) are located on the black keys and therefore much easier to distinguish.

We’ll be looking at intervals and using them to generate chords and scales, so understanding this golden rule is going to be very beneficial. 

It’s basically algebra - we substitute notes for numbers.

So, we have our keyboard in front of us and we have numbers along the top starting with ‘1’(our root note) on C, then moving up using only the naturals (white keys), this gives us a C Major scale.

Important rule!

E to F and B to C are both half steps, this is seen clearly in the case of C Major - as there are no black keys in between these notes.

This means the intervals: 3 to 4 and 7 to 1 will always be half steps. All the other intervals in this scale are a whole step.

(whole step = two half steps)

Once this is understood we can begin using some formulas for easily building chords and scales  for example:

To build a Major chord you take the [1  3  5]  of the scale. In this case the C Major chord would then consist of [C  E  G]

To build a Minor chord all you need to do is flatten (lower) the 3rd interval by a half step. 

[1  b3  5]  or  [C  Eb  G]

Major Scale: [1  2  3  4  5  6  7]  - [C  D  E  F  G  A  B]

Natural Minor: We flatten three notes  [1  2  b3  4  5  b6  b7]  -  [C  D  Eb  F  G  Ab  Bb]

The one thing that might be more challenging is working in other keys for example: 

How do we find a D Major Chord?

• First we need to move our root note, or our ‘1’ to D, making sure to remember which intervals are whole steps and which are half steps. 

• We now move up a whole step landing on E for our ‘2’, then move another whole step which means moving past the F natural (as that would only be a half step from E) finally landing on F# for our ‘3’.

• We know from earlier that 3 to 4 is a half step which puts us on G for our ‘4’, then one more whole step puts us on A for our ‘5’.

This is all the information we need to build a D Major chord!  [1  3  5]  = [D  F#  A] 

This is only scratching the surface, but these principles are the building blocks of all music theory. Try building your own major and minor chords using the formulas you picked up from this lesson!

Hopefully you found this helpful, check back soon for more lessons and tips on guitar playing and music theory - Thanks!