Fretboard Evolution Vol. I - Steve Rieck

The good news is that once that critical foundation is firmly set, each
concept of music theory, every chord and scale you learn no matter how
advanced becomes a relatively simple formula you can memorize and play
easily in any key. The other huge advantage is that you begin to not only see
but also hear how these chords and scales are related.
For example, if we say that a “dominant 7 th ” chord is made up of the 1 st , 3 rd ,
5 th and “flatted 7 th ” notes of a major scale, that is meaningless and useless
to a player who doesn’t know the notes on their fretboard and isn’t
confident with the notes of their major scales.
For the player who has set that foundation however, the notes of any 7 th
chord are instantly defined and he/she sees dozens of ways of arranging
those notes on the fretboard into useful chords and - equally as important -
they begin to recognize and hear that flatted 7 th .
That’s just a single example. ALL scales and chords can be thought of as
formulas applied to the notes of a major scale as above. Luckily, we don't
need to just memorize all those formulas by rote. There is a method to the
madness.
Again, these two things are the basic requirements for any music theory
knowledge, without them, we hit a brick wall.
Any chord is merely a combination of three or more specific notes. Any two
notes within a chord or scale represent an “Interval” or simply a measurablemusical
distance between the two notes (Chapter 3 is devoted to
understanding intervals in more detail).
A two-note combination (interval) may sound stable or unstable to your ear
or in more basic terms pretty or ugly. This relationship of consonance and
dissonance is a big part of what creates the magic in any chord – or for that
matter any melody and music in general.
Lastly, I want to point out the obvious - that music theory is not a system
of laws to rigidly restrict your musical decisions. It’s merely the facts
about harmony (“These notes make this chord – Here's how I could combine
them on the fretboard” and so on…). Your ears are the ultimate judge of
© 2011 Steve Rieck – all rights reserved 4