Dear NYC Guitar School Community,

For the past two decades I have devoted myself to making learning guitar as absolutely accessible, achievable and easy for my students as possible. “It’s easy to play guitar!” I shouted. “Anybody can learn to do it!” I strove to make every chord, every progression and every piece of theory as easy as possible as NYC Guitar School grew from a single room to thousands of students.

But one day one of my teenage students came in and taught me a valuable lesson. He said, “Hey, Dan—I just realized something.”

“What?” I asked.

“Sometimes guitar playing is just not easy” he explained. “Sometimes it’s just hard, and you just have to keep working at it until you get it, and it takes a lot of time and effort.” 

I felt like I’d been hit by a thunderbolt. He was absolutely right. And in my effort to make guitar accessible to people, I’d actually been doing them a disservice by intimating that it was always easy to play guitar. No wonder my students sometimes got discouraged when it wasn’t! 

For example, for most beginning guitar players, the G to C change is a giant and inconvenient pain in the phalanges.*
Theoretically, it is easy to get comfortable with the change—after all, you simply need to practice the change somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 times. But, practically, practicing changing from G to C between 1,000 and 2,000 times takes a lot of, uh, practice. 

And sometimes that’s not easy! 

So let’s not play pretend. Whether we’re learning guitar or chemistry, or getting ready for a concert or an interview, sometimes the most important part of a great strategy isn’t the strategy–it’s the part where you keep going!

And when you get tired, when your fingertips are sore, when you lose your focus, give yourself a pat on the back! In life and guitar playing alike, persevering may not always be easy—but you’ll be glad when you can say “it was worth it!”

On To Greatness!
Dan

*A phalange is one of the digital bones of the hand or foot.

Ukuleles are quite similar to guitars. One of the perks of playing fretted instruments is the relative ease with which new instruments in the family can be picked up, and going from guitar to ukulele is no exception. It might not be quite as direct a one-to-one translation as going from guitar to bass, but the broad strokes are still pretty similar. Notes are fretted the way, each fret represents the same interval, and the two instrument’s standard tunings are more similar than they may at first appear. However, some things to watch out for are the ukulele’s significantly smaller fret size, the fact that it has fewer strings, and the one string on the ukulele that’s tuned quite differently from anything we have on guitar.

Tuning A Ukulele

The standard tuning for a ukulele is G-C-E-A, when looking at the strings from left to right. However, while the strings on a guitar are tuned higher in pitch than the string preceding it, this is not entirely the case with a ukulele. While the E and A strings of a ukulele do follow this pattern, the  G string is actually tuned to a higher pitch than the C string. I wouldn’t fret too much about tuning the G string to the right octave; ukulele strings are much more brittle with less mailable tunings than guitar strings. If you strung your ukulele correctly, then the G-string should find the right octave pretty naturally when you start tuning. 

Navigating The Fretboard

Once you’re in tune, let’s take a moment to analyze standard ukulele tuning. Even the G-string is tuned higher than the C-string, the distance between those two strings can still function as a perfect fourth, which is the same interval as most strings are tuned apart on the guitar. The distance between the C string and the E string is a major third, and the distance between the E string and the A string is another perfect fourth. If music theory isn’t really your thing or if you didn’t otherwise pick up on the significance of those intervals, then please allow me to spell it out for you: those are the same exact intervals as the top four strings of a guitar.

This means that any shapes and patterns you know on the guitar that don’t involve the 6th and 5th strings can be directly applied to a ukulele. It’s true that it’ll be in a different key than it’ll be in when playing it on a guitar, but any intervals and chord qualities will remain the same. If you wish to keep the pitch the same, you can accommodate for the differences in tuning by either raising everything by seven frets or by lowering everything by five frets. While employing some combination of these two methods in which you raise some notes by seven frets and lower other notes by five frets can technically work, if you’re not careful it can result in disjointed melodies that awkwardly hop between octaves, so I’d recommend sticking to just one or the other if you can. 

If you’re looking to find notes along the ukulele neck and simply transpose the notes you know on guitar, then don’t worry! As I mentioned earlier, each fret on a ukulele represents one half-step, just one fret on the guitar does. This means that you can count up the fretboard in half-steps exactly as you would on a guitar, except that your starting pitches are G, C, E, and A, as opposed to E, A, D, G, B, and E. 

One alternate option is to tune your ukulele to D-G-B-E, just as the top four strings of a guitar are typically tuned. This will allow any guitar shapes, patterns, or songs you know to be applied directly onto a ukulele without any need to transpose the frets. It’s true that the D string will be tuned to a higher pitch than the G string, which it would not typically be on a guitar, but it would still be a D-note and will harmonize and blend with other notes just as any D-note would. 

If you try out this strategy, I highly recommend tuning down to D-G-B-E instead of tuning up. Ukulele strings are fragile and have a tendency to snap when tuned up even small margins past their standard tuning, and the difference in tuning required by this trick is substantial. However, tuning down this much will significantly lower the pitch of the ukulele. While that much was probably obvious, what’s less obvious is the impact this will have on the timbre of the instrument. 

When tuned down this much, a ukulele will lose the bright, snappy tone that is the instrument’s trademark. What you’ll get instead is a much more somber, mid-range heavy sound that, while not without its merits, is likely not what you were going for when you decided to pick up your ukulele today. So if you’re going for a classic chipper ukulele sound, then tuning down probably isn’t the way to go. 

Applying Familiar Chord Shapes

As I mentioned earlier, any shapes you know that only use the top four strings of the guitar can be applied to a ukulele. However some guitar chord shapes will work particularly well when played on a ukulele, and it takes surprisingly few of them to navigate many common chord progressions. One particularly useful chord shape is the open F-chord shape from the guitar. You can see it charted out for a ukulele below.

When applied to a ukulele, it utilizes all four strings to form a nice, versatile, and almost root-position major chord shape. When played in first position it forms a Bb-chord, but the handiest thing about this shape is the fact that it’s entirely movable. As there are no open strings in the above shape, you can slide it anywhere you want along the fretboard. The root note occurs twice in this chord shape; once on the G-string and once on the A-string. That means that whatever note you are playing on those two strings will be the name of the chord. As the root note repeats, you can feel free to drop one of the two root-notes if you’re looking for a slightly smaller sounding chord. 

For example, when you play that shape along the first three frets of a ukulele as written above, it forms a Bb-chord, as previously stated. But if you slide that entire shape up one fret, then you’re suddenly playing a B-chord. If you slide it up another fret you’d be playing a C-chord, if you slide it up another fret then you’d be playing a Db-chord, and so on. As the fretboard of a ukulele spans a little over an octave on each string, this shape can get you through every simple major chord you might come across. Also, don’t forget that these shapes can be slid down to open position, where the open strings can be utilized.

If you’re curious, the answer is YES, this same exact thing can be done with the open F-chord shape on a guitar. 

It’s true that just sliding the same shape up and down the fretboard might not make for the most interesting changes, but it’s enough to get you started!

If you take the above major-chord shape and lower the note on the C-string by one fret, you’ll get a movable minor-chord shape that will function exactly the same as the major-chord shape. Between the two shapes, you’ll be able to make your way through any chord progression consisting only of simple major and/or minor chords. You can the movable minor chord shape charted below.

Take the common chord progression below, and see if you can figure it out on a ukulele, using just the chord shapes above.

If you figured it out correctly, then you should be playing something like this:

So while it’s true that sticking to just these chord shapes can get you through most simple progressions, doing so would involve lots of jumping around the fretboard and would have next to no variation. So while these movable shapes certainly have their merit, the next step is to learn some alternative voicings. Luckily, these voicings can be borrowed from your guitar knowledge as well. 

The movable triad shapes that are often played along the top three strings of the guitar can be applied directly to the top three strings of a ukulele. While you’ll have to adjust the frets as previously discussed in order to get to play the same chord, the quality of the chord will remain the same. Learning to play these triads on the ukulele will allow you to save time moving around the fretboard, will give you chord voicing some great variation, and can get you surprisingly far on the instrument. 

Just like the chord shapes, we went over, these triads are all entirely movable. If you are unfamiliar with these shapes, they are discussed in depth in the article link above, and some of the most pertinent shapes are charted out for ukulele below. The root notes for each chord shape are highlighted. 

If you are interested in further exploring this topic, I highly recommend checking out the two videos below, which go further in-depth and fill in some of the gaps. 

Pentatonic scales are a great way to start improvising on guitar. Pentatonic patterns are simple and easy to memorize, and they remove some of the riskier note options, essentially ensuring that every note choice will land safely. However, those riskier notes that the pentatonic scale removes can also be some of the most effective note choices when used well. So while the pentatonic scale is a great scale to start soloing with, learning the full major and minor scales are an important next step for your guitar playing. Luckily, the full major and minor scales are not very different than their pentatonic counterparts. If you have a solid grasp of those pentatonic scales, then you’ve already done most of the work involved in learning the full major and minor scales.

Full Minor Scale

Before we get into the full minor scale, let’s review the minor pentatonic scale. There are multiple fingering patterns one can use to play a minor pentatonic but below is tablature for the most common pattern. The pattern is in the key of A-minor in this example, but it can be applied to any key. Play through the pentatonic scale a couple of times if you feel like you can use the refresher, and try jamming on it for a bit if you could use the refresher. 

A-Minor Pentatonic Scale

We’re now going to add the notes from the full minor scale that are absent from the minor pentatonic. The notes missing from the minor pentatonic are the second and sixth scale degrees, which in the key of A-minor are the notes B and F. As the above minor pentatonic spans a little over two octaves, the newly added scale degrees are both going to occur multiple times. The second scale degree is going to occur three times and the sixth scale degree is going to occur twice, for a total of five additional notes to add to the shape. The full A-minor scale is tabbed out below. 

A-Minor Scale

Try playing through the above A-minor scale shape until you feel a bit more comfortable with it. Once you feel ready, try jamming on the full A-minor scale and give special attention to the new notes you just added. Explore the way they sound and try your best to integrate them into the licks and phrases you already know. The scale should feel mostly familiar, but those new note options can make all the difference in the world to its sound. If you’re looking for something to play along with, the backing track below will work great.

Full Major Scale

The process of adding notes to the major pentatonic scale is going to be just like adding them to the minor pentatonic. The most common major pentatonic scale isn’t quite as standard as the most common minor pentatonic shape, but the shape tabbed out below is still most likely the one you’re familiar with. If there’s a different major pentatonic shape you prefer, then feel free to use it instead and adjust as needed. The below scale is in the key of C-major, but like the above A-minor pentatonic shape, it can be moved to any key. As with the minor pentatonic, review and jam on the below scale if needed before moving on.

C-Major Pentatonic

The notes removed from the major pentatonic are the fourth and seventh scale degrees of the major scale, so those are the notes we need to add back into the scale. In the key of C-major, the fourth scale degree is an F and the seventh scale degree is a B. If those notes sound familiar, it’s because those are the same notes we added to the A-minor scale. The fourth scale degree and seventh scale degree both occur twice in the full major scale, for a total of four additional notes to add to the pentatonic. You can see the full C-major tabbed out below. 

C-Major Scale

As with the full minor scale, try playing through the above major scale until you feel solid with it. Once you feel up to it, try jamming using the above major scale shape. Give special attention to the new notes you added, see how they sound, and try blending them into the major pentatonic licks you already know. The backing track below will work well for the C-major (don’t let the fact that it’s labeled D-Dorian dissuade you, the notes are the same as C-major), and the backing track above will do the trick as well. 

I hope you learned something from this article! If you have any questions, comments, corrections (I have been known to commit the more than occasional type or notation mistake), or requests for future articles like this one, please feel free to reach out to me at benfittsguitar@gmail.com. 

While learning new chords can often be daunting, even the trickiest chord shapes can feel not so scary when you’re able to relate them to shapes you’re already comfortable with. Any chord shape can be mastered with enough practice and elbow grease, but you might be surprised to learn just how many chord shapes are out there where you’ve already put in the bulk of the effort without even knowing it. In this article, we’re going to go over some chords that you may not know but are very similar to two chords that you probably do: F and Dm.  

Chords Based On The Open F

We’re going to start by learning some chords based on the open F-chord shape. This is not the 1st fret barre chord F that some players learn early on, but instead the version where you put your ring finger on the 3rd fret of the 4th string, your middle finger on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string, and collapse your index finger of the 1st frets of both the 1st and 2nd strings. You then strum the top four strings, skipping over the 5th and 6th strings entirely. 

A perk of this F-chord shape is that it is entirely movable. As it contains no open strings, you can slide this shape up to any fret and it’ll still be a major chord. Exactly which major chord it is will change based on where you place it, but it will always retain its quality as a chord, and the same is also true for all the chords we’re about to learn based on it.

Fadd9

To play an Fadd9 chord, start by making the open F chord shape described above. Then add your pinky to the 3rd fret of the 1st string. You can choose to either leave your index finger collapsed, or you can straighten it out and have it touch only the 2nd string. It makes no difference to the sound of this chord, so it’s really about whichever is more comfortable for you. The Fadd9 chord will work almost everywhere that your ordinary F chord will work, and its more somber sound makes it an interesting choice as a substitute. 

Fadd9 Chord

F6

Playing this F6 shape is going to be a lot like playing the above Fadd9 chord. You’re again going to just add your pinky to an open F-chord, but this time add it to the 3rd fret of the 2nd instead of to the 3rd fret of the 1st string. This chord will again work just about anywhere that an ordinary F-chord would work, but it has a nice touch of melancholy that the plain old F-chord lacks. 

F6 Chord

F7

Although slightly more of a stretch than the other chords discussed so far, this F7 shape has a great, crisp sound to it. To play this F7, start by playing an F6 chord exactly as described above. Then slide your pinky finger up one fret, from the 3rd fret of the 2nd string to the 4th fret of the 2nd string. That one fret is all the difference there is between an F6 and an F7 chord, although it makes a world of difference in terms of harmony. An F7 chord will work about one in every three times that you see an ordinary F-chord written, so I’d avoid using it as a substitution if you don’t have too much theory knowledge. 

F7 Chord

Chords Based On The Open Dm

Next, we’re going to learn some chords based on the open D-minor chord (commonly abbreviated as Dm). We’re going to use the common open Dm as our frame of reference. To make this chord, place your middle finger on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string, your ring finger on the 3rd fret of the 2nd string, and your index finger on the 1st fret of the 1st string. Then strum the top four strings, allowing the 4th string to ring out open, and skipping over the 5th and 6th strings entirely. 

This Dm chord isn’t quite as perfectly movable as the above F-chord because it involves the open 4th string. However, if you remove the 4th string from the chord entirely, then the remaining three notes of the Dm chord are completely movable and can be placed anywhere on the fretboard. This is also true for the chords we’re about to learn based on this Dm shape, so feel free to experiment with moving these shapes and down the neck. 

Dsus4

To play a D-suspended-fourth chord (or Dsus4, for short), play the Dm chord shape as described above. Then add your pinky finger to the 3rd fret of the 1st string. That’s all there to it! You can choose to either leave down the middle finger already on the 1st string or lift it off the fretboard. It makes no difference to the sound of this chord, although it is easier to switch back and forth between a Dus4 and a Dm chord if you leave the finger down. The Dsus4 will work just everywhere your Dm chords will, and their ambiguous sound can make them a very interesting choice for a substitution. 

Dsus4 Chord

Dm7

In order to play this D-minor 7 chord (or Dm7), start with the open Dm shape. Then lift your ring finger off the guitar and collapse your index finger so that it covers the 1st frets on both the 1st and 2nd strings, similar to the way you would play an F chord. In fact, another way to arrive at the Dm7 shape is by starting with the F chord described earlier, then lifting your ring finger off the guitar and letting the 4th string ring out open. A Dm7 will work pretty much anywhere that you see an ordinary Dm written, and substituting it can be a great way to subtly class-up a chord progression. 

Dm7 Chord

Bb

Even though this is the only chord on this list where we’re going to change the root note, it’s surprisingly easy to change a Dm chord into a Bb. All you have to do is take the above Dm shape and slide your middle finger from the 2nd fret of the 3rd string to the 3rd fret of the 3rd string. That one fret makes the difference between a Dm chord and Bb, although some would refer to this Bb voicing as Bb/D. 

Alternatively, you could refinger this voicing with your ring finger on the 3rd fret of the 3rd string, your pinky on the 3rd fret of the 2nd string, and your index finger on the 1st fret of the 1st string. These are some frets as described above, but you may finger it more comfortable to instead use these fingers. As it is a different root note entirely, substituting a Bb for a Dm typically won’t work out super well, but it’s still a great chord shape to know. 

Bb

I hope you learned something from this article! If you have any questions, comments, corrections (I have been known to commit the more than occasional type or notation mistake), or requests for future articles like this one, please feel free to reach out to me at benfittsguitar@gmail.com. 

Two-handed tapping is a fun technique that allows you to grab ahold of notes generally outside of your reach and often leaves audiences dazzled by its flashiness. While you shouldn’t learn tapping purely because it’s flashy, most guitarists would be lying if they told you that it wasn’t at least part of the appeal. But for all the awesome things a solid tapping technique has to offer, a surprising amount of people seem unsure what to do with the technique once they develop it. 

This article is written assuming that you already have at least a basic understanding of tapping. If you’re looking to learn to start tapping, check out THIS ARTICLE. 

I found that a great way to start tapping with taste is to view the technique through the lens of your typical scales. If you have experience improvising already, chances are you can come up with a decently tasty solo based off of a favorite scale shape or two. I’ve found that it’s best to view the technique of tapping as merely an extension to what you’re already doing with your improvising. The point shouldn’t be tapping in and of itself, but rather to use tapping to explore options otherwise unavailable without the technique. 

To start, pick a minor scale shape that you feel comfortable with. It should preferably be a scale shape lower on the guitar neck, particularly one that starts below the 12th fret, but we’re about to do isn’t impossible if you start a little higher. For the purposes of this example, I’m going to pick an A-minor scale starting on the 5th fret. If you are unsure how that scale goes off the top of your head, you can see it tabbed out here: 

A-Minor Scale

Whatever scale you picked will be what I like to think of as your “bass scale”. When throwing tapping into an improvised solo, your bass scale is the scale you primarily play out of. It’s the scale from which your licks that don’t involve tapping are based and the scale to which the notes you tap are contrasted. I think of it as a bass scale partially because it tends to sit lower on the guitar than the other scales we’re going to introduce, and partially because it’ll serve as the foundation for everything else we’re about to do.

Warm-up by playing through your chosen bass scale a couple of times and possibly even jamming on it for a little bit. Once you feel ready to move on, find the root note of your scale. In most cases, the root note is going to be the very lowest pitched note in your scale shape and the one you play first. It will in all cases share the same letter name as the scale it’s in. While it’s true that most scales contain multiple versions of that root note in different octaves, right now I’m referring to the lowest-pitched version of that note. In the A-minor scale tabbed out above, the root note is the A on the 5th fret of the 6th string. 

Once you’ve found your root note, count up five frets from your root note and play the note you arrive on.  As my root note was the A on the 5th fret of the 6th string, the note I’d be arriving on is the D on the 10th fret of the 6th string. We’re going to use this new note as the root note in a Dorian scale. A Dorian scale is a scale that uses the same notes as its relative major and minor scales, but it uses the second note of the major scale (or the fourth note of the minor scale) as its root. Scales that use the same set of notes but vary which one is the root note are commonly referred to as modes. 

A D-Dorian scale, starting on the 10th fret is tabbed out below. If you used a scale other than an A-minor for your bass scale, then the below pattern is still applicable but you will have to adjust the frets to accommodate which scale you did choose. For example, if your bass scale was a G-minor starting on the 3rd fret, then play the exact Dorian shape below, except two frets lower. 

D-Dorian Scale

If this Dorian scale is new to you, then try playing through it a few times until it becomes comfortable. Once you feel solid on the Dorian scale, go back to the minor scale you chose to be your bass scale. Try jamming on your bass scale, but use tapping to pepper in notes from the Dorian scale. This can be as little as adding only one tapped note at a time or even adding phrases that are entirely tapped, but whatever you do the fact that you are tapping should take a backseat to whatever musical ideas you explore. 

For the sake of this exercise, try not to stray from the minor or Dorian shapes at this time. Incorporating other spots on the fretboard can be a great way to expand upon this concept later on, but for right now try keeping it simple. 

Once you feel comfortable incorporating the Dorian scale into your tapping, find the root note of your Dorian scale the same way you found the root note of your minor scale. Once you’ve done that, count up another five frets and play the note you arrive on. In my example, the root note of the Dorian scale was the D on the 10th fret of the 6th string, so I’m going to arrive at the G on the 15th fret of the 6th string. We’re now going to use this new note as the root note of a Mixolydian scale. A Mixolydian scale is a mode in the exact same way as the Dorian, except that it is built upon the fifth note of the major scale rather than the second. 

In my example, I would then be playing a G-Mixolydian scale. You can see that scale shape tabbed out below. Just as with the example given for the D-Dorian scale, the shape of the below Mixolydian scale can be applied to any root note, as long as the exact frets are adjusted accordingly. 

G-Mixolydian Scale

Play through the Mixolydian scale a couple of times if it’s new to you. Once it feels comfortable, go back to your bass scale. Try jamming on your bass scale again, except now add tapped notes culled from the Mixolydian scale shape than from the Dorian. Once you feel like you’ve gotten the hang of that, we’re going to try reintroducing the Dorian scale shape. Solo with your bass scale, and pepper in tapped notes from either the Dorian or Mixolydian shapes, or preferably from both. 

It might feel like a lot at first, but once you get the hang of it you’ll have two whole additional scales to tap with!

I hope you learned something from this article! If you have any questions, comments, corrections (I have been known to commit the more than occasional type or notation mistake), or requests for future articles like this one, please feel free to reach out to me at benfittsguitar@gmail.com. 

The thundering guitar crunch that opens “Your Love”, the debut single from longtime New York City Guitar School teacher Clayton Hopkins’ new solo project Claytones, perfectly sets the tone for the song’s remaining four minutes. “Your Love” is a full-throttle rock and roll tune painted with the throwback sounds and textures of 80s arena rock, a fact which the song makes known from the moment it starts. It achieves this through the phaser-heavy electric guitar tones, meaty analog synths, robotic vocoder sounds, soaring vocals, and the joyous sense of melodrama synonymous with rock from that era, but seldom heard since the release of Nevermind. “Your Love” is the kind of song that begs to be blasted during the training montage of a sports film, ideally one about skiing or boxing. In other words, it’s the kind of song that the rock world doesn’t even realize how sorely it misses.

Even with all of that being said, “Your Love” is much more than a slavish recreation of music from a bygone era. While the song is brimming with unabashed nostalgia and is sure to bring to mind the work of such artists as Loverboy, Billy Squier, and Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen (all the way down to Hopkins’s high-speed guitar fireworks and piercing upper vocal range), there still manages to be things both unique and innovative about “Your Love”. Perhaps it’s because Hopkins has a luxury the music that would seem to have inspired him did not: the gift of hindsight. 

The previously mentioned artists all created their highly stylized rock and roll back in the 80s, but Hopkins gets to do it in the 2020s. The distance of these decades allows him to sift through his influences like an editor with a manuscript, subtly editing the original to suit his needs and the demands of the current marketplace. The production has a tad more punch, the lyrics a tad more darkness, and the tones a tad more gloom than the furiously chipper songs that crowded the airwaves of 1980s rock stations. It’s as if Loverboy had been loaned a time machine that let them peek into the coming alternative rock era shortly before they stepped into the studio to record Get Lucky, and the result is everything you could hope it would be. 

The concept of keys itself isn’t too daunting. Most students I’ve taught have an easy enough time grasping the concept that each key contains seven specific notes that all work together, and that those seven notes can be arranged to form a specific set of chords unique to that key. However, what seems to give musicians more of a challenge is knowing exactly what key they are in. Those with a strong knowledge of theory can analyze a chord progression or other piece of music and determine its key, but that is often much easier said than done. Looking at music analytically often isn’t an option yet for students still working on honing their music theory chops, and isn’t entirely applicable to songwriting trying to determine the key of pieces of music that aren’t entirely written yet. If this describes you, then this article may be of help to you. 

In this piece, we are going through a step-by-step process to determine the key of a piece of music entirely by ear that is friendly to musicians with little-to-no music theory knowledge. In order to use this process, you will have to have an instrument with you and some way of playing the music whose key you’re trying to determine. If the music in question is a pre-existing song then all you’ll need is some sort of media player capable of playing the song. If you’re trying to determine the key of a vocal melody you’ve written that doesn’t have chords yet, then you can try singing the melody while testing out the key notes on your instrument (more on that later). If you are trying to determine the key of something you wrote on your instrument, such as a chord progression or riff, then I recommend recording the music in question on your phone or other device and testing out the key notes over the recording. Once you have your specific citation all figured out, then you’re all ready to go!

Some quick notes before we start: this process is geared towards diatonic keys, which are the most common kind. If the music you are analyzing is written in a less common kind of key, such as a harmonic minor or a blues, then you may find some issues with the system. Additionally, many songs based on diatonic keys will have occasional moments where they use notes from outside the key. It’s up to you to use your ear and your judgement if you think the music in question sounds like its maybe venturing outside of the key that most of the song is in. If so, you may want to use a different part of the song for this process. 

A short final note is that this piece determines a song’s relative major key. Your song may be in a minor key or other mode. If you feel like this is the case, you can look up the name of that mode after determining its relative major key. If none of those quick notes made all that much sense to you, then don’t worry about it. They are primarily there as disclaimers for outlying pieces of music anyway.  

A Sharp Key, A Flat Key, Or Neither?

The first step is to determine whether you are working in a sharp key, a flat key, or the one key that is neither.  Start off by playing an F-natural note repeatedly over the piece of music. If the note clashes, then that means you are probably in a sharp key, thus limiting the possible keys to G, D, A, E, B, and F#. This is because the F-note is the first note to become sharp in sharp keys, so there is no natural key with sharp notes but not an F#. If the note does not clash, but instead feels at home with the piece of music, then that means you are either in the key of C major, or in a flat key. 

If this is the case, then your next step is to play a B-natural note over the music. If both the F-natural and the B-natural blend smoothly with the song, then you’re in the key of C-major. This is because while F is the first note to become sharp, B is the first note to become flat in flat keys. C-major is the only key with no sharps or flats, meaning that it is the only natural key with both an F-natural and a B-natural. If the B-natural clashes with the music but the F-natural does not, then that means you are in a flat key (the reasons for that are discussed above). The natural flat keys are F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, and Gb, meaning that if you’re dealing with a flat key, you’re dealing with one of these. 

If You’re In C

If both the F-natural and the B-natural work with the music, then it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re in the key of C. You can double check this by playing sharp and flat notes over the music and making sure that they clash, but that’s really just in case you’re unsure. Otherwise you’re in the key of C, so congrats, you’re done! That was quick, wasn’t it?

If You’re In A Sharp Key

If you’ve determined that you’re in a sharp key, then you’ve completed the first big step. Your next move is to determine exactly which sharp key you are in. As mentioned before, the sharp keys are G, D, A, E, B, and F#, meaning that you will be in one of these keys. In order to determine exactly which of these keys you are, try playing the note that becomes sharp in each key over the music in question. Don’t worry if you don’t know what those notes are; we’re about to go through them one by one. 

A quick note: Key signatures are cumulative. We start in the key of C, which has no sharps or flats, and either accumulate sharps in the sharp keys or accumulate flats in the flat keys. Therefore, the sharps or flats we accumulate in one key will carry over to the next key. Will get more into that later, but for now we will simply look at the sharp keys in the proper order for the notes to carry over. 

The key of G is the first key to have a sharp, meaning that it has only one sharp. That sharp is an F#, which is the one note all sharp keys have in common. If F# is the only sharp note that works with your piece of music, then that means you are in the key of G. However, in order to know that F# is the only sharp note that works, you’ll first have to try out at least one other. 

The sharp key that follows G is D, which contains both an F# and a C#. As you have already confirmed that an F# works with the music in question, try playing a C# over it. If the C# clashes, that means you are in the key of G. If the C# does not clash, then that means you are not in the key of G and can rule it out, leaving you with the possible keys of D, A, E, B, and F#. If the C# did not clash, then the next note to try is a G#. If the G# clashes, then you are in the key of D. If the G# does not clash, then you can rule out the key of D, leaving you with the possible keys A, E, B, and F#. 

If you still haven’t found the key yet, then the next note to try is a D#. If the D# clashes, then you are in the key f A, and if it doesn’t then you can eliminate the key, thus leaving you with the possible keys of E, B, and F#. The next note to try is an A#. If the A# clashes then you are in the key of E, and if it doesn’t then you are down to only two possible remaining keys: B and F#. If you made it to this point, then you’re probably in the key of B for two reasons. The first is that the key of F# is pretty rare, and the second and bigger reason is that the key of F# contains an E#. E# is the enharmonic spelling of the note F, which you already determined clash with the music in question in the very first step of this process. 

I know that was a lot, so some of the above information has been condensed into the following chart for easy reference: 

If You’re In A Flat Key

If you’ve determined that you’re in a flat key, then the process is pretty similar to that of being in a sharp key. As mentioned before, the natural flat keys are F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, and Gb, so you’ve already narrowed your options down to one of these. To figure out exactly which of these keys you are in we’re going to play the note that is flated in each key over the music in question, thus eliminating keys until we’re left with whichever key matches your music. You’ve already determined that B-natural clashes with the music in question, but a good way to double check that it’s in a flat ket is to play a Bb note over it. Every flat key contains a Bb, so the Bb should blend smoothly with the rest of the music. 

A quick note: Unlike sharp keys, the notes used to test flat share names with many of the keys flat themselves. For example, a Gb flat note can be used to determine if you are in the key of Ab, and an Ab note can be used to determine if you are in the key of Bb. This can lead to quite a bit of confusion if you don’t read carefully, so please watch out for that! 

 If Bb blends with the music in question, then the next note to try is an Eb. If the Eb clashes with the music, then its in the key of F. If it doesn’t clash then the key of F can be eliminated, leaving you with the possible keys of Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, and Gb. After Eb, the next note try is an Ab. If the Ab clashes then you are in the key of Bb and if it doesn’t, then the key of Bb can be eliminated which leaves the remaining keys of Eb, Ab, Db, and Gb. After Ab, the next note to test over the music in question is Db. If the Db clashes with the music, then you are in the key of Eb, and if it doesn’t then you are left with the remaining keys of Ab, Db, and Gb. 

The next note to try over the music in question is a Gb. If the Gb clashes, then you are in the key of Ab. If it doesn’t then the key of Ab can be eliminated, leaving you with the remaining possible flat keys of Db and Gb. Now that you’ve narrowed it down to only two possible keys, there is only one note left to try: a Cb. If the Cb, which is better known by its enharmonic spelling B, clashes with the music in question, then you are in the key of Db and if it doesn’t, then you are in the key of Gb. 

Just like the sharp keys above, some of all of that has been condensed into following chart:

A lot of guitarists will either jam on a scale or play chord shapes they already know. Scales and chords are often taught as separate entities, and many guitarists never think to blend the two. However, this kind of thinking can be pretty limiting. Within each scale lies all of the chords in that key. If you learn how to find chords in a scale, It can be easy to incorporate them into otherwise scale-based playing, such as leads, solos, and riffs. In this piece, we’re going to go over how to form chords, how to find them in the scale shape, and how to invert them into new voicings. 

We’re going to start by looking at the archetypical A-minor minor scale pattern, starting on the 5th fret. Although the concepts discussed in the piece are equally applicable to any key, they really are derived from this scale shape, so it’s important that you get it under your fingertips before continuing. 

The A Minor Scale

A chord is, by its very definition, any combination of three or more notes. This means that there are quite a few different chords that can be formed by combining the notes in the above scale. However, most of those potential chords sound pretty dissonant and aren’t widely used in popular music, so we’re going to focus on finding the chords that you’re more likely to use in your playing. 

Most common chord types, including major, minor, dominant, diminished, and augmented chords, are built on a series of stacked thirds (suspended chords are an exception to this rule). By following this pattern of thirds, it’s easy to build diatonic chord voicings straight out of your scale shapes that will sound great when thrown into your solos and riffs. Let’s look into how. 

What’s A Third?  

A third is a type of interval. In fact, it just might be the most important interval in all of tonal music. An interval is the distance in pitch between two notes. Intervals quantified based on how big or small that distance is. If you were to play the open 6th string and then play the 1st fret on the 6th string, then the distance between those notes would be a very small interval (known as a minor second). But, if you instead played the open 6th string followed by the highest fret you can reach on the 1st string, the distance between those notes would make a much larger interval. 

There are several types of thirds, but all of them are found counting up three notes in the scale from your starting pitch. When counting thirds, it’s important to remember to count your pitching as one, or you will end up with the wrong interval. 

For example, let’s say you’re starting pitch is a C. Then if you count C as one, D as two, you will arrive on E when you reach three. Therefore, you can conclude that E is the third of C.

For our purposes, whether the third is an E-natural, E-flat, or an E-sharp depends on what key you are in, but all three variants but all the variants will form the foundation of some type of chord. The key of A-minor has E-naturals in it, so if you’re in that key then the third of C will be an E-natural. However, the key of C-minor has E-flats in it, which means in that key then the third of C is an E-flat. 

These variations are the cause of the previously mentioned different kinds of thirds. However, it’s important to remember that each potential starting pitch will only have one possible third without stepping outside of the key (if you are interested in stepping outside of the key, then the possibilities are wide open). 

Finding Thirds In The Scale Shape 

A C-note can be found early on the above A-minor scale shape, on the 8th fret of the 6th string. An E can then be found nearby on the 7th fret of the 5th string. You can play these notes together, as tabbed out below, and play the third in question straight out of the scale shape used in the original example. 

However, as guitarists, we have a bit of a shortcut to finding thirds (and other intervals) that many other instrumentalists do not. The third of any note can be found by using the following pattern. 

From your starting note, go up one string and down one fret in order to play a major third, or go up one string and down frets in order to play a minor third. This trick works between any two adjacent strings except for the 3rd string and the 2nd string. This is because the 2nd string tuned differently than the guitar’s other five strings. If you do go from the 3rd string to the 2nd string, then the core concept of the trick remains the same, but the details are just a little different. When going from the 3rd string to the 2nd string, you go up one string but stay on the same fret to find a major third, and go up one string and go down one fret to find a minor third.

Major thirds are the foundation of major chords and minor thirds are the foundation of minor chords, and together they make up by far the most common types of thirds. 

Example: If my starting pitch is the C on the 9th fret of the 6th string, then in order to play a major third I’m going to go to the E on the 8th fret of the 5th string, and in order to play a minor third I’m going to go to the Eb on the 7th fret of the 5th string.

If you’re wondering whether you’re looking for a major or minor third then there’s no need to worry, because luckily there’s a convenient trick for that as well. If you’re sticking to typical major and minor keys, then each note has only one kind of common third that will be inside the key. The major and minor scale shapes include all of the notes in the key, so it’s easy to check which notes are and aren’t inside the key. 

Try applying the trick of finding thirds to some of the notes on higher frets in your chosen scale shape. If you go up a string and down a fret from your starting pitch and arrive on a note inside the scale shape, then you know that in this key, the note has a major third. However, if you go up a string and down two frets from your starting pitch and arrive on a note inside the scale shape, then that note has a minor third.

This trick doesn’t work quite as smoothly when you’re pitch is on one of the scale’s lower frets, because it’ll likely take you out of the scale shape. If you do use this trick on a starting note that’s on one of the scale’s lower frets, then figure out the name of the note you arrived on and try and find that pitch elsewhere in the scale shape. If you can find that pitch within the scale, then you’re starting pitch has whichever type of third you just found. If it doesn’t, then it has the other type of third. 

Building Chords With Thirds

That first third is the foundation of most common types. But, as previously mentioned, a chord needs to contain at least three notes. The third note in the chord can be found by following the same process as the second note was found; take the new note and find its third. For example, in the key of A-minor, the third C-note an E. To find the third, count up three notes in the scale from E. E is one, F is two, and G is three, meaning that the third of E and the next note in the chord is a G. That gives us the total notes C, E, and G. 

The notes C, E, and G are the bare minimum needed to spell a C major chord. This bare minimum form is called a triad, but any of those three notes can be repeated to form a more fleshed out version of the same chord. Or, if you’re looking to add a fourth unique pitch to the chord, simply find the third of the most recently added note and repeat the process all over again. For example, if we were to add a fourth note to a C major triad, then we would find the third of G in the key of A-minor. The third of G is B, which is natural in the key of A-minor, giving us the final notes C, E, G, and B. This spells a Cmaj7 chord. 

This strategy can also be employed by using the previously discussed trick of finding thirds on the fretboard. Pick a starting pitch, and go up a string and down either one or two frets to find its third. Then find the third of that note, and you’ve built yourself a triad. 

Let’s back up a little bit to the last example discussed, where we found a C major triad by counting up in thirds. We’re now doing to use our trick of finding thirds to apply that concept directly to the fretboard. Our starting pitch of C can be found on the 8th fret of the 6th string. If we go up one string and down one fret we arrive on the 7th fret of the 5th string, which is an E. We know this is the correct third because the 7th fret of the 5th string is in the A-minor scale shape we are using. 

If we go up one string and down one fret the E, we arrive on the 6th fret of the 4th string, which is a G#. We know this is not the correct third, because that note is not in the scale shape we’re using. However, if we instead try and a minor third and go down two frets, we will arrive on the 5th fret of the 4th string, wish is a G-natural. This note is in the A-minor scale, so we know that it’s the correct third for the chord. That means that if we play the C on the 6th string, the E on the 5th string, and the G on the 4th string altogether, we’ll be playing a root position C major triad.

Moving Past Root Position Triads

There’s nothing wrong with root position triads, as their wide usage in music can attest to. However, sticking to nothing but root position triads would be severely limiting to your playing. So while starting with root position triads is probably the easiest way to find chords in your scale shapes, at some point you’re probably going to want to go something else with the chords you find. Luckily, there’s a couple of easy strategies to this. 

The first is to flesh out the triads you find so that they are no longer triads. You can do this either by finding additional thirds to stack on top of your triads (thus creating chord types such sevenths and ninths), by finding intervals other than thirds whose sound you like when played with the triad (thus creating chord types such as sixths and add ninths), by repeating the pitches in your triads, or by doing some combination of all of these. Below is an example of a chord formed by using the root position C major triad we previously looked at, but adding news garnered from two of those three options. 

As you can see, the first three notes of the above chord the root position triad played exactly. Then, the already existing chord tones C and E were double by adding the 5th of the 3rd string and the 5th fret of the 2nd string to the chord, respectively. Finally, an A note was added from outside the chord on the 5th fret of the 1st string. This gives us the total pitches C, E, G, C, E, and A, and the unique pitches C, E, G, and A, which spell a C6 chord. 

The other option is to keep only the notes that were already in the triad, but to change their location and/order on the fretboard. If you use this strategy, you will still have a triad but instead of having a root position triad, you will end up something called an inversion. An inversion is simply the notes in a chord played out of order. 

Take the notes in you’re triad and find them elsewhere in your scale shape. To continue with the root position C major triad we’ve been using an example, I can take the C note we were playing on the 6th string and move it to the 5th fret of the 3rd string, move the E from the 5th string to the 5th fret of the 2nd string and leave G where it is on the 4th string. This leaves me with the total notes, from bottom to top, of G, C, E. Even those these notes are no longer in root position, they still spell a perfectly valid C major triad. 

It’s often said that most improvised solos can either be categorized as “vertical” or as “horizontal”. These designations refer less to objective musical elements, and more to the mental approach taken by the improviser during the solo, which is why you will sometimes hear these concepts referred to as “vertical thinking” and “horizontal thinking”. But whatever way you like to frame it, the concept remains true that at any moment of improvisation, you are probably thinking about your note choices in either one of two ways. 

Traditionally, improvised solos were created almost unanimously along the lines of what we would nowadays call “vertical soloing”. Vertical solos are solos whose note choices are deeply rooted upon the chord progression they are happening over, and with a particular emphasis on the chord they are happening over at that moment. As a result, vertical solos are often largely categorized by their heavy use of arpeggios, with improvisers incorporating arpeggio patterns for each chord in the progression as they occur. If you yourself are interested in soloing this way but don’t know a ton of arpeggios offhand, you can perhaps learn a bit about arpeggios here and here. 

Although arpeggios often make up the foundation of vertical soloing, they are not all that it entails. Other important elements of vertical soling include choosing notes that help anticipate the coming chord changes, adding notes not found in a given arpeggio shape in order to give an arpeggio run some color, and sometimes even avoiding the notes found in the chord currently being played over altogether, thus creating a sort of anti-arpeggio. Vertical soloing can really emphasize chord progression, create a sense of movement in a solo, and it works great when soloing over songs that don’t stick closely to one key. However, it can require a decent understanding of music theory and awareness while improvising to even get started. This makes vertical soloing a great goal for new improvisers to work their way up to, but is not the easiest place to start as a soloist. 

On the flip side, horizontal soloists tend to care less about the chord they are on at the very moment. An approach popularized among musicians by trumpeter Miles Davis, horizontal soloing is most concerned with the overall shape of an improvised solo and less with nuances of traversing from chord to chord. Horizontal soloists tend to focus on the use of scales and tend to utilize different mode shapes. An improviser also has less to worry about and to keep track of when sticking to a horizontal mindset, which makes it to focus on things like phrasing, dynamics, and sonic exploration. 

Horizontal soloing works great for songs that more or less stick to one key, and its reduced learning curve has made it both a great place to start as an improviser and the eventual standard method of soloing in rock and most other forms of popular music in general. There is a good chance that you yourself have been playing horizontal solos for as long as you have been improvising without even realizing that there was a name for that specific approach. However, sticking strictly to the world of horizontal soloing can be somewhat limiting in the long run, as it completely shuts one-off from the effects one can create with the more harmonically focused approach of vertical soloing. Then, somewhere in between these two extremes, exists a seldomly discussed approach that I like to think of as diagonal soloing. 

I mentioned earlier that when improvising, you are probably thinking about your note choices in one of two ways. I still stand by that statement, even though I am now mentioning a third concept. That is because diagonal soloing is not so much an approach to improvising in and of itself as much as it is the art of deftly navigating between vertical soloing and horizontal soloing. When doing this, you will still be soloing either vertically or horizontally at any given moment, but your solo will incorporate both approaches and its overall shape will fall somewhere in-between.

Diagonal soloing allows you to borrow the best elements of both vertical and horizontal soloing, and the contrast can be an effective tool in and of itself. A particularly compelling move, and a favorite trick of Queen guitarist Brian May, is to start a solo primarily in a horizontal headspace, and then build it up to a climatic and highly vertical conclusion. The reverse is also an option, although often much more difficult to make sound organic. 

However, diagonal soloing loses the anchoring structure of vertical soloing yet without quite affording the freedom found in horizontal soloing. Because of these factors, I would advise becoming comfortable both as a vertical soloist and as a horizontal soloist before merging them into diagonal soloing. But once you put in the time and effort to become comfortable as a diagonal soloist as well, chances are that you’ll impress yourself with what you’ll be able to pull off.