 Guitar and Excel, open chords, C major scale, C major chord and intervals. Get ready, because it's time for our guitar skills to... Excel. Here we are in Excel. If you don't have access to this workbook, that's okay because we basically built this from a blank worksheet, but we started in a prior presentation. So if you want to construct this from a blank worksheet, you might want to begin back there. However, you don't necessarily need access to this workbook when viewing this from a music theory standpoint, because we will simply use it as a tool to map out the fretboard, give us the scale and related chords we're focused in on. If you do have access to this workbook, three tabs down below. Example, OG and open chords, C tab. The OG tab in orange, representing the worksheet we constructed in a prior section, and which is now our starting point, which we will copy over and adjust. The example tab representing the end adjustments to this worksheet, the open chords, C tab, representing the adjustments we have made in prior presentations and will continue to use at this point in time. Quick recap of what we have done thus far. We went to the OG tab. We got our fretboard over here. We copied it over and then hid a bunch of cells. So we're focusing in on just a small part of the fretboard where the open chord positions are at. And then we also hid it so we can see this worksheet giving us our C scale, the C major scale, and the C major chord is what we're focused in on. We then used our conditional formatting to map out on this piece of the fretboard, the three notes in the C major. And we thought about different ways that we can basically play that chord in this position. And then we also thought about it in terms of what if we overlay that on top of the pentatonic? What if we overlay it on top of the major scale? What we want to do now is get into a little bit more of the theory side of things. And this is something I would typically do or I generally do do in the mornings. When my mind is working a little bit like 15 minutes at a time, try to think about the music theory of it. And that usually gives you some ideas to kind of noodle around with. So in the evening, possibly after work, when you don't want to think about all the different theory stuff, you can just kind of noodle around in the evenings. I think that's a technique that kind of works for me. So also note that when you get into like the intervals and the different numbering systems, it's going to get confusing no matter which way you look at it. And many people look at it their own way. They basically almost have to come up with your own kind of system that makes sense to you so that you can keep all these things in your mind and separate, meaning you're using different number patterns for different things and you've got to find some way to separate those things in your mind. Also note that when you watch other people do this kind of thing, they're trying to map this stuff out in a way that makes sense to them. We often have a tendency to say, well, that's not the best way to do it. That's no good. But what you really want to do, and I tend to do that often as well, but generally it'd be best if you can actually see this stuff from different angles. So if someone else sees it a little bit differently, then it would be best to try to see it the way they see it, not only so that you can communicate with them, but I think the basic definition of understanding something is to be able to see it from different angles. So the more different angles that you can kind of explain this stuff to yourself in your mind, that means you have more neural connections between these things and that means by definition I think that you understand it better. Okay, so let me first lay out what I mean about some of the confusing factors here. Note that we actually numbered all of our notes here and this will be really helpful with the intervals because you can use some simple math as we'll see shortly. So we did that, I would call them absolute numbering and I'm going to go to the OG tab over here just to remember what we did to do that. We listed out the entire musical alphabet, which isn't just A through G, but it also has the sharps and flats in it. So there's actually 12 notes in the musical alphabet A through G sharp. Now if you just number those notes, then it becomes a lot easier to be able to count up or down. So if I can memorize that A is a one, absolute one, it doesn't change. I'm just saying it is a one, A sharp or B flat. I'm just going to name that note because it's the same note tone-wise as a two. And then a B is a three, a C is a four, a C sharp or D flat is a five, and so on and so forth. If you can do that up to 12, notice that you have a lot more flexibility to be able to count up and down the entire musical alphabet. In other words, it's difficult for me to count up and say the musical alphabet because I can't sing it. I can't say A, A sharp or B flat, B, C, C sharp, D flat, D sharp. It becomes difficult, and when I try to say it backwards, D, D flat, C, B, it becomes difficult. If you have numbers, one, two, three, four, five, six, six, five, four, three, two, one, you can easily say them backwards and forwards. So I think it's really useful to actually memorize the absolute number of the notes, and that'll help you with the intervals as well. So that's what we have here. So when I say this C is a four, I mean it's absolute number four according to the musical alphabet, not in relation to the scale. Now we're also going to call it the one note of the scale. Well, what does that mean? Well, remember how we constructed the scale? If I go back to the musical alphabet here, we constructed the scale by basically doing our whole, whole half step. So if I said this was a four, a C, then we constructed the scale taking two notes up, two notes up, one note up, two notes up, two notes up, two notes up, one note up, or in other words, whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. So when we were looking at the relative notes, we're not using all the notes in the musical alphabet. So now we're starting, and I'm taking this C, which I'm calling an absolute number four, if you just numbered them from the musical alphabet, and saying it is now relative position one relative to the C major scale. So now it's, so when I look at this number one, it's relative. So I'm going to keep reminding myself of that in my mind. This is a relative position one relative to the fact that I'm starting on the C major scale, and the C major scale doesn't have all the notes of the musical alphabet in it. It only has seven of the notes out of the 12 notes in the musical alphabet. Now these numbers over here are the same one through seven of the scale, but they give us that added ability to see that the uppercase and those are the ones that happen to construct a major versus the lowercase a minor and the dot is representing a diminished, which we're not going to get into a lot of detail now. Okay, and then you have the interval numbers. So when I construct my my chord, I construct that with just three notes. We said that that's a C chord. It's a C, E and G. How did we construct that? Well, if you see it in a circle, I think it's easier to kind of see in a circle sometimes. We said this is the one, here's the two, here's the three, here's the four, here's the five, here's the six, here's the seven. If I start at a one, we have the C and then we skipped the D and went to the E. And so there's our three. So notice it's the three note. This is the one note of the scale. This is the three note. Let's do it this way. This is the three note of the scale, which is also here, right? This is the three note of the scale. And then this is the fifth of the scale, meaning we skipped from here to here. Now we've got the fifth here, which you can see is the fifth note of the scale. And that's how we constructed the first three notes of our chord. Notice that works here because we're actually in the key of C and we're looking at the first chord in the key of C. But just remember that if I go to this one, how did I construct this one? This is going to be like a D minor. And so how did I construct that? Well, I started here. I'm still using my C major scale. And then I just did the same thing. I skipped every other note and we went to here, which is an F. And then we went to here as an A. So here's the D, F, A constructed the same way. But I'm not going to call that as though it started on the two, even though I did construct it from the C major scale, we're going to say that when we talk about the chords, it's in relation to its scale, as if the one note of the chord is the one note of the scale. So if I was to map out what does the one three five mean when I'm looking at the two chord, which in this case is the D minor, let's look at a D minor over here. I'd have to go, let's go to the OG tab. I'm going to change my key here to be a six, which is a D. And then it starts off with the major scale, but I'm not in the major scale. It's going to be the minor scale. And we'll talk about why that is in a case, but here's the D minor. So now you can see the one three five is the D, F, A. And now it makes sense because it's the one three five, right? The one three five of its scale. So if I go over here, that's the D, F, A. So even though we constructed it from the key of C, we're just constructing something that, that we, that we is built from its own scale, right? So that's what that number in means that what, that's why that gets a little bit confusing. And then you can say, okay, well, what happens? And we'll talk more about this later. Like if I go over here, I have the seven. That makes sense. That's the seven over here on the one. But what about this nine? How can it be a nine when there's only seven notes? There's only seven notes in the scale. And, and that's basically, you can see here, well, that you're like, hey, that looks like a two and it is, it's a two, but you're not going to call it a two because we're using our pattern of skipping every other note. So that means we skipped every other note to here. We skipped every other note to here. We skipped every other note to here to get to the seven. And then we skip this note to pick this one up, which is actually the nine. We're going to call it the nine in our pattern of skipping every, every other note. So we'll talk more about that later. And this one, of course, would be the 11 of skipping every other note. So you can see that these notes are actually the ones that we skipped last time. So that D we skipped last time. This one, that F is the one we skipped last time. But we're trying to put it in the pattern of skipping every other note because that, that is the heart of the, of the major chord. And the reason you do that is because when you play the ones that are right next to each other, they have a little too much dissonance between them. They're too close together to kind of sound good. So you can still play them, but they're not like the core. The core of the music is usually these three notes, the first three. Okay. So that being said, then we can start to kind of map this out in our positions over here. And I would do this first with our worksheet and then try to try to finger it without the worksheet and be able to kind of list it in your mind just like 15 minutes in the morning and just say, what is this, what does this chord mean? Can I map it out in my head? And then you can see the relative relationship, you know, between the chords. So let's, let's think about it. I'm going to, I'm going to say, okay, this first one, let's do this. I'll put this one on top. Let's say I'm going to, I'm going to cut this. What did I do? I keep on doing that. I'm going to say, I'm going to try to put it on top. So I'm going to cut it and paste it. So now it's on top. So I can put it on top of this one. Okay. So that's the one we're focused in on. That's the root. The first thing I'll try to do is list what my fingers are on according to the 135 because everything that I'm holding down here is going to be one of these three notes. And I can list which one they are. Am I playing the one, the three or the five? So if I'm looking at this position, this first note right here is the one, which is the C. This note right here is going to be the third. Now it's useful to differentiate the third because there's going to be a different third when you're talking about the majors versus the minor. So I'm going to call this then a major third and note that the major third, you'll start to recognize the position. There'll be a major third down one string and back one string typically. And then if I look at this string, that's the open string that we're not fingering but is ringing out and that's going to be the five. So notice if you moved this position up, you might have to finger it differently. I can imagine fingering it like here and then putting my, if I had to move my finger to pick up that five and that's why it's a movable position because I've got the 135. You can kind of imagine that relative position here. And then if I bring my finger back here, I can look at this one. That's going to be this finger on the B string or the one closest to the floor, second to the bottom. And that's going to be another root. So that's another one. And then this one down here is going to be, if I ring that out as an open E, that's going to be another three. So my normal position here of a C has two ones and it's useful to know where those two are because then you can start to think, well, I can remove one of those if I wanted to and I'd still basically be playing a C. Maybe I remove, for example, this one and I play this instead. I let that B ring out. Now I'm playing the seven but I still have the three notes that I need because this was a repeated C and I can play something a little bit more complex but still in the range of a C that we would be playing. So that's the one first kind of way that you might map it out. Now you could change the positions as well and start to think about, well, what if I played it like this and I just looked at these three, then I could say that would be kind of like this. I could do the whole thing like that or I can play it like this just playing those three notes. And then what would that be? Well, now the root note is not in the lowest position so my root note is here. That's important to note because when I move it up I want to follow that root note because that's going to tell me what the chord is. So if I say that then I can say, well, this is still the one which is where that C is. This is still the one and then this one up top above it is the fifth. Notice that's an important pattern to note if you're trying to construct things as you move up the fretboard. The fifth is above, you know, there will be a fifth, in other words, above it most of the time except for the relationship between these two strings. These two strings here, there's a different interval between those two strings but everywhere else you're going to say, okay, if that's my root, the fifth, there's a fifth above it. That's good to know. And then down here I still have my third. So now this is going to be the five, the one and the three. So it's good to be able to map that out. And then down here you can see if I just played like these three, I could say, okay, well, the root is the one I'm holding down right here and now you can see that funny relationship between these two strings because you would think above it, right above it you should have the fifth but no, it's back one. It's back one here to get the fifth because of that funny relationship between these two strings. Now you can start to kind of visualize that funny relationship which is actually good because that helps you to hold more fingers down. That helps you to have more opportunities. And then down here you've got the E and that's the third. So you can basically map that out different ways and then you can basically say, well, what if I put my finger down on this one? That's going to give you another fifth which is nice to know because if you move this position up, then of course that relative position should move up with it. Now the next thing I'll do is I'll try to get technical on actually listing out the intervals to get a better understanding of this and so I would basically hold this down and say this note right here is the relative position one and the reason I say relative position is because it's relative to the scale of the root of the chord that we're in. So it's relative to the C major scale in this case. This is going to be a relative position one of the C of a C. And when I say C, I could just say C instead of C major or C minor because whether I'm talking about major or minor, the one note is going to be the same and then I'll list it which is a four, note four, absolute number, note four which is a C and then if I list this note, I'm going to say this is relative position three meaning it's a relative position three to the root note. So now it's the third of the related scale which is here relative position three and I would also list out its absolute distance. So I'm going to say this is relative position four note away which you can see up top and I'm also going to call it a major third. Notice I didn't call the first note a major first and the reason I don't have to do that is because there's no difference between the majors and the minors but when I go to the third, there's a differentiating factor. It's four notes away to get to the third when it's a major. It's only three notes away when it's a minor. That's useful to kind of repeat in your mind. So I'm going to say it's a, this note is a four note away major third of note C, right, of C. And C is a four so if I add four plus four I get to eight and eight is the absolute position so if I can remember that eight is an E then I can get there by just using my math. I can say well I went from the absolute position of a four and then I added four notes to it because that's what it means to be a major third away two whole steps which is four notes and I can say four plus four is eight and so then I can go to this and so then I can say this one right here I'm going to say this is a seven note away fifth of note four which is a C. So in other words the fifth when I think about it as a fifth it's the fifth of the scale so you can see it right here it's the fifth of the scale but it's actually seven notes away and note here I also don't have to say whether it be major or minor because the fifth unlike the third is always the same interval away. It's not five notes away when you're talking about all the notes in the scale it's actually seven notes away. So we're saying it's a fifth because it's the fifth note in the scale it's seven notes away because that's how many notes away it is from the root in this case the root is a four so if I added seven plus four seven eight nine ten eleven I get to eleven which is a G so if I just number all of my all of my notes from one to twelve then the G is an eleven and then you end at G sharp so I would try to put my fingers here and say okay this open string here is a seven note away fifth of note four C which is seven plus four or eleven and note number eleven is a G and then I can go down to this one I'm gonna say okay this is once again the relative position one of a C which is of course note four C and then I would go down to this one and say this is going to be the relative position relative position four note away major third of note four which is a C which is four plus four four plus four is gonna be eight absolute note position note number eight is an E and you can see by mapping that out you'll basically be able to try to get all this differentiation about what is a relative position versus it'll start to make more sense so let me do that one more time and of course once you do it this way you can do it with these notes as well and you can finger it kind of this way and you can figure it out again so let me try to do that again without as much commentary I'll just say okay I'll put my fingers here one more time and once I mapped it out on my fret board then I'll try to do it without the fret board up top without excel and just try to think it out and I was just like okay that's gonna be relative position one of note four which is a C which is of course note four which is a C this note right here the second one is gonna be relative position major third it's the major third as opposed to the minor third four notes away as opposed to three notes away of note four C and four plus four is eight and eight I know is une and then I would go to this one and I'd say okay this note right here is going to be relative position seven note away fifth of note four which is a C four plus seven is eleven and I know eleven is a G and then I'd go to this one and say okay I'm holding down this one this is the relative position one of note four C which is simply note four C and then I would go to this one and say this is relative position four note away once again another four note away major third of note four which is a C four plus four is eight and therefore that is an E and then again you can do it this way and I can hold these three down and say okay what is that doing well I have now on top what I have is a seven note away fifth of note four which is a C seven plus four is eleven I know eleven is a G and then below it I've got the one with the three so if you can start to kind of say that in your mind I know that's quite tedious but if you say that in your mind it'll start to get your mind wrapped around what you're actually playing which will give you some ideas if you were to move things up where the relative positions are and if you do that like fifteen minutes in the morning or something like that then it often gives you some ideas to kind of noodle with in the evening where you're not thinking as much and then you're just kind of saying to my ear after work kind of thing