Basic building of scales and major chords

 I guess I’m going to start by assuming that you know a little bit about music theory, ie the names of the notes and a few other things. 

What I have found was helpful for me when playing without much music reading ability was to know the notes that you can play in a major scale and the 3 major chords in each. When you know the notes in each major scale, you know what notes you are mostly allowed to play. This will help you when trying to add runs and substance to songs that you are playing. 

First off to find out the notes you can play in a major scale, it’s a basic pattern. You know where middle C is. Let’s try to spell out a C major scale. Start at the root note of the scale (in a C major scale, that would be C. A major it would be A, and so on). Then it’s a process of either taking a half step up (the next note to the right) or a whole step up (2 notes to the right). There are 8 notes in a major scale. Starting with the root note, take a whole step, another whole step, a half step, a whole step, a whole step, a whole step, and another half step, which will bring you to the C an octave above the first one you played. The notes you played should spell out C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. You can use the same formula for all 13 different keys on a piano and figure out all 13 major scales. I would encourage you to drill yourself on these as much as you can. Spell out the major scale, and either search for a video on the correct fingering for each major scale, or purchase John Thompson’s scale speller book, and practice as many scales as you can, playing with both hands, and go up 2 octaves and down 2 octaves. The more you practice, the better you get, and after 2-3 years of doing that 5 days a week, I knew the scales like the back of my hand. 

When you get to that point, instead of notes, you can assign each note a number. The first note in the scale would be 1, 2nd would be 2, and so on. For every scale, you have major and minor chords that can be played along with it. The major chords will fall on the 1, 4, and 5 notes, and minor will fall on 2, 3, and 6. Major chords are written starting on the root note, then going up 2 whole steps, then 3 half steps. So if you want to play the major 1 chord in the key of C, start on the 1 (c), go up 2 whole steps (e), and 3 half steps (g). That makes the notes in a C major chord c, e, and g. Play those notes together and notice how they sound like they go together. There are also different positions (or inversions) of a C chord you can play. If you change the order of the notes, and start on e, then play the g, and a c. The 3rd inversion would be g, c, and e. If you want to play the major 4 chord in the key of C,use the same method, and you will come up with the notes F, A, and C (an f major chord). The major 5 chord would be G, B, D (g major chord). The formula for a minor chord is root note, 3 half steps, 2 whole steps. So D minor in a C scale would be D, F, A. Knowing what chords are in each scale will help you immensely. I would also practice playing the 3 major chords in each scale, as well as the other 2 inversions to each in both hands  daily if you can. That’s how I learned them. 

Any song ever written has the main basic notes that the singer sings (the melody), and the other harmony notes which all blend together to make chords. Now that you know how to play chords, all you need is a (correct) chord chart to a song, and if you are well versed enough with the song to know what it is supposed to sound like, and familiar enough with the key and the chords listed, you should be able to play the song and it should sound like what you play will go along with the song. There are many, many songs that you can find chords to, and now that you know how to spell out major and minor chords, you can, with a little bit of practice, be able to play along to your favorite songs. 

The next posts I hope to do are just tricks that I have come across in my years of playing that can help you add some flair and depth and filler to your playing.