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.
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.
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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March 22, 2010 at 9:03 am | Learn Guitar Scales | 3 comments
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