The second guitar lesson

For the second guitar lesson we will follow up on the chords you learned in the first guitar lesson. The best way to proceed is to look at what notes you can play with those chords given in the first lesson. For the six chords in the lesson, A major, D major, E major, G major, C major and E minor, there are many scales you can play to them.

For this lesson let's use the major scale to play with those chords. Take a look at this article about the major scale pattern and you should read introduction to musical scales if you are not familiar with them.

Chords in scales

Let's look a little closer at what scales you can use. Here is a list of major scales for a given chord.

Chord	A major	D major	E major	G major	C major	E minor
Scales	A major (I)	D major (I)	E major (I)	G major (I)	C major (I)	D major (II)
	E major (IV)	A major (IV)	B major (IV)	D major (IV)	G major (IV)	C major (III)
	D major (V)	G major (V)	A major (V)	C major (V)	F major (V)	G major (VI)
						F major (VII)

NOTE! The roman numeral after each scale name tells you in what position a cord can be found in the scale. The poisons are seven as the scale notes, they are I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII. That's just fancy writing for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

As you can see there are a lot of scales you can play for the six chords. These are not all the scales that can be played with each chord, these are just the basic form of major scale that fit.

With this new information you can derive at a new conclusion i.e. you see that chords can be grouped into a single scale or in other words, a scale has many chords. Now we see what chords can be played together while playing the same scale over them. Another table can be made from this information, we can call this table "scale chords."

Scale	A major	E major	D major	G major	B major	C major	F major
Chords	A major (I)	A major (IV)	A major (V)	D major (V)	E major (IV)	G major (IV)	C major (V)
	D major (IV)	E major (I)	D major (I)	G major (I)		E minor (III)
	E major (V)		G major (IV)	C major (IV)
			E minor (II)	E minor (VI)

NOTE! There are many more chords for each scale than shown in the scale chords table. Those used here are there for demonstration purposes only. If you want to read more about what chords scales do include, you should read the article chord formation from scales.

The lesson

Record a individual chords progression for each scale of G major, D major and A major. Play them back one by one and play notes from the appropriate scale to the recorded chord progression. Play with the other scales for fun.

The purpose of this lesson is threefold:

1. Learn the scales and play them in to your fingers.
2. Learn what scale to play to what chords.
3. Discover the musical harmony of the scales and chords playing togather.