 Guitar and Excel see major a minor scale fret number five targeting the a minor chord Get ready and some coffee because we're gonna analyze Excel pull out the guitar and start getting picky picky picky with it You know, I've been picking for well over 40 years at this point although only about 15 of those on the guitar But I had an advantage from the start I mean who knew being a child naturally born with excessive booger production would be a benefit But here we are and now it's time for those years of pick and practice to pay off Now it's time for all that struggle to pay off use all that fire inside So let's do this 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 did so in prior presentation So if you want to build this from a blank worksheet, you may want to begin back there However, you don't necessarily need access to this workbook if looking at this from a music theory standpoint Because we'll simply use it as a tool to map out the fretboard Give us the notes the scales the chords that were focused in on if you do have access to this workbook though There's a bunch of tabs down below including the og orange tab representing the original worksheet We put together in a prior section mapping out the entire fretboard Giving us our entire musical alphabet and letter format number format combining letter and number format Providing a key that can be adjusted with this green cell to the scale that we want to focus on Adjusting the worksheets to that scale on the right Giving us then the notes in the scale the chords Constructions from the notes in the scale interval information and more We then wanted to focus on the key of C starting with the open position Chord constructions in that key so that's what these yellow tabs are down below so over here open positions fret 1 through 3 We mapped out the C major chord chord 1 of The C major scale we then went to the 4 chord and we discussed it in detail mapping it out in open position We then went to the 5 chord then back up to the minors the 2 chord D minor and then the 3 chord E minor And then the 6 chord a minor and then the diminished 7 chord. We then wanted to jump from the position on frets 1 through 3 up to the middle of the guitar and Learned that not with chord shapes, but rather with our scale shapes so we discussed how this these shapes fit together and then we discussed the major and pentatonic and major scales and how they fit together and Then we looked at how we could connect our new shape in the middle of the guitar that we learned in scale format to the shape that we learned in the open position in chord format focusing in on first the C chord and then jump into the F chord and then the G chord and Then we went to the D minor chord and then we went to the E minor chord and now finally We're going to go to the a minor Chord so this is where we left off last time So what I'm going to do is copy this worksheet over I'm going to hold down control and left click and drag this to the right and then I'm going to double-click on our Worksheet, and I'm going to say that this is going to be an a now And then I'm just going to adjust our worksheet here for the a minor Quick recap before we do that remember that up top this is going to be our pentatonic shape and Then we have down below We have the pentatonic shape is on top of is how I would think of it on top of the major shape So basically we put down below on the base You can see below everything that's colored right here You could think of it as being blue those being the notes of the major scale And then on top of that we put the green notes Which are going to be the Pentatonic notes and then on top of that we put this scale now We're going to move those scale notes down to here and make it the a minor scale so let's move it down to here and I'm going to then highlight this whole thing and I'm just going to adjust the Formatting so I'm going to go to the home tab style conditional formatting. Let's manage the rules I'm going to double-click on the green one here and Delete this and we're going to say this is going to be an a So that's going to be the one and then I'm going to do I'm going to double-click on the red Delete this this will be the C and then I'm going to double-click on the yellow and Delete this and this is going to be the e so we'll say okay and Okay, and it'll change everything up top. Hopefully I think it did and then I'm going to just format paint down here I'm going to put this here format paint this one to here and then the C I'm going to format paint that one to here and Then the e I'm going to format paint that one to here and then I'm going to Format paint these to not be colored anymore and there is there we are now This is going to be the a minor so in open position We saw when we looked at the cords over here the a minor Basically, it looks like this. I kind of it's kind of a messy thing. I should fix that looks like that an open position So I can reformat that over here. I'm going to say okay that a minor is going to be looking like that this is where our fingers go there there and and Then here and then this a rings out You could ring out that e but you might not ring out the e so you get more of an a Sound with it. So there we have it So get these boxes. I got too many boxes. Okay, let's pull these down I'm just going to delete these ones because there's a lot of boxes I feel like we have too many going on here now I also want to think about the relative minor. So in this case the mode would be the aolean mode or the relative minor of The a-minor so that's going to be on the right. Let's pull that in. I'm going to hide from a t over to the minor right click and hide that stuff So we could then think of it as We have the six or we can think of it as it being the one of The relative minor now obviously of all the modes the aolean or the relative minor is going to be you know the most important Mode that we want to be picking up. So let's go ahead and then I'm going to hide. I'm going to See full screen So this and this is as big as it can go on the full screen without losing info Okay, I think that is good. So then over here We could then first thing we might do is target the a's so I can see my a's because I'm playing an a minor an open position And then possibly moving over here to the a so there's where the a's are at now quick recap If we pull out the trusty guitar here It we're still if we can think of ourselves in the key of C Just like any of these other chords that we constructed in which case the a might be something that we're just switching to right So if I'm in C or any of the other modes, right? But if I'm saying C is my tonic, how can I make C the tonic? I could just start playing on it So here's the C and then I could go F maybe and then go to the a Maybe to achieve and then back to the C So if I do that then I'm kind of trying to make the C the tonic by basically playing around the C Now the other thing we can do is make the six the tonic or the central point What we're going to be playing around with this with the whole thing is kind of hovering around And it should be pretty easy to do that because in like a Western music that the minor Mode the Aeolian mode is very very common So our ears are basically used to doing that and so we could start with an a minor The a minor should hopefully kind of sound like home now We can think about that as though we're playing all the notes in the key of C But we're just making the six like the central point But this one in particular the minor mode You probably want to also be able to convert in your mind to see it as the one Because the minor is such a is so common of something to be playing in it's also really useful when you see it as the one because It's just as easy as like on the majors the one Four five are the majors and if you convert the six to the one So now you're playing in a minor the one The one four five are the minors so that one four five are like the easy things to kind of practice Playing because they're gonna be if you're in a major scale the major chords and if you're in the minor scale They're gonna be the minor chords now the other thing just to note here the thing that's great about the minor That's not always the case with the other modes that we played is that when we play this six We are using that we could use the pentatonic scale exactly. So if we know the pentatonic scale All these notes will fit in the pentatonic scale Whereas we saw that many others of the other modes that we looked at they're not gonna fit in there because you constructed it We constructed these with Seven notes we can we used the seven note scale to construct all of these chords So you would think any of the chords that have a four or seven in it are not gonna fit in the pentatonic Because those are two notes removed So you can think of the pentatonic that we usually used in as being related to either the one The major or its relative minor the six of the major and all those notes fit in there Otherwise if you're in some other chord you can think of it as as we discussed before like you're in the pentatonic But if you're playing like an F, then you might add the F So a lot of people think that way and it works quite well, right? You see you have your pentatonic shape Which is probably the most versatile shape that you can use and then you're just gonna say I'm just gonna adjust it and add The F, you know when I when I'm on that chord And that way you're using all the notes that are probably the most versatile notes and you can just kind of adjust it That's one way to think of it or you can think of it as basically you're playing in a major You can switch your mind to the relative major which includes all the other notes Which will have all of these notes and the chords in it But with the with the related minor don't even have to worry about that because all the notes are gonna be in the related minor So we're gonna think of ourselves basically as though we're in the minor or playing around the six however Whichever way you want to think about it so that we can start practicing that Chord the minor the minor chord So the first way we might do that is is then to say well, how can I move from this shape? To get into this shape and we can target then the A's right now with this with this shape It actually starts on an A. That's why a lot of guitarists Really including me right you just learn the A first because you learn this shape Oftentimes in position 5 and you tend to play it in a minor because it starts on an A minor and most people start learning these Scales by just playing them from the top string to the bottom string Which might not be the most musical way to do it But that's what most people do and so that means that there's they're typically playing in an A minor because that's what They're starting and ending on all the time. So here's your A. Here's your A and here's your A, right? So then if I was to play over here, I can play this And I'm going to try to follow one of my fingers in I think this finger is always a nice easy one to follow in Because it's going to lead you perfectly into your shape Over here generally so you're in the four positions and then I can walk my way into one of these A's I'm probably going to target that one the most because it's right in the middle, right? So there's that a boom and you kind of closes it out that I can go back on over here, maybe I might follow this string There's an A Here's a power chord. Remember you can always make a power chord Even if you don't know exactly everything else that you're doing you can usually take this note and the one down to the right That's the first and the fifth. I could do that here. I Could do that here. I can't do it here because it's the bottom string But I could I could take the one above it and that's still kind of like a power chord right there That's the other way you can think about it. There's always a fifth Above it as well so You can follow any of these fingers in If I follow if I follow this finger in it takes me right to the A if I go all the way up to the A If I follow this finger in Takes me to a D So I'm just following I'm just going boom Taking this finger into a D and then playing it you could take your hands off So it's not like you have to follow something in But when I take my hands off remember you're probably gonna then go You're probably gonna play it like a scale that so that so you want to be able to when you take your hands off Target something else that you're gonna do something different so you can start playing it not in just a scale and My the idea would be that you're trying to give yourself some leeway To be creative to do what you want to do But also have some boundaries around it It's kind of like if you're playing if you're doing poetry or a song or something like that It's not like you can do just anything you want to have some boundaries and then see how creative you can be within The boundaries and that's usually gonna be useful. So the next thing we can do also just before I forget Realize that with all the minors you have these Open strings so the minors that are in the C major Chords or the C major scale are gonna be the D minor the E minor the a minor Which means you have these open notes right here So that that's another reason the a minor is a is a fun thing to play Because if I'm playing down here I have that open a and I can always use that as my base when I'm up here So things aren't if I don't even know where the a is I Can keep on playing this a up top and it'll still sound like I'm in the key of a because that's kind of like There's a bass beat on top of it. That's always gonna keep you in That's place right so I can do that I can do my cheating little bit up here I can finger like this which I kind of like to do just for rhythm and I could just play like these two notes going from here to Here and reaching for these other notes so I can just from this one finger right there I have I can explore how many things I can do and always go back to the a right because the a is the open note I can reach up here into my pentatonic position So now I'm reaching up to pick up that G and I'm in that position I can hit the one but I can hit the one below it, which is another a Right if I want to so it's kind of fun just a noodle around there and then I can of course Bring my whole finger up with just one finger hitting the open a To when I get to the double stop to a's because this is open this open a and that a and then go back So that kind of stuff is kind of fun to do that and then you can think okay Well, what are the chord shapes over here in my new position? Can I make a chord that is an a chord and if we analyze it we can say okay? Where's the a looks like this? We're gonna say it looks oh, what did I do it looks like this here and Then like this right so those are those that's the shape that would probably first I come to mind It's gonna look like that And if you were to analyze that in open position, you're gonna say okay That's gonna be kind of like an e-shape an e minor shape right so if we played the e minor over here We did we did this in our open positions. It would look like that If I switch that to a bar chord then I'd have to go okay I'd have to play it like that right I put my finger on the bar and if I move that bar up I'd switch these two fingers to bring it up to here So that's that's basically our Standard bar shape chord now just to just to see how the cage system kind of works on the miners If we start off in open position with the a minor we're over here Then the next shape would be the G now the G is something that isn't like one of the first shapes that you're gonna Be learning oftentimes in open position, but you can kind of construct it and see what it would look like because here's the Major so if I take the G major over here and just go okay. It looks like this and then I flat The third it would it's hard to play right, but I can flat this over here, and it would be something like that, right? so take this shape and then Flat the third to get to the minor so if I'm going back on over here, and I'm gonna say okay. Well if I'm looking at my a Here then the next shape if I go to my a up top This would be the G major kind of shape and if I flat the third It would look like this something like this and then if I wanted to so this would be the this would be the one and Then this would be the third and then I'd reach back to the fifth Which is right here because if it was an open position these would be barred so if I want to get a Fifth I'd have to do that now It's kind of an awkward shape to see or to play But it's pretty easy to play like this where you get the where you get the first and the third It's not too bad to play that especially if you have stronger or larger hands than I do but But it's useful to kind of see it so that you can see what's going on with the how the all of the shapes are tagged together And it's also useful to be able to arpeggiate That kind of shape as well So you can play it like one string at a time when you're basically Noodle in around and then you're going from a G to the E which is what we're on here So now that's how we get up to our E shape that looks like this now that bar chord is Not too bad to play but it's actually in some ways harder than the major bar chord where you hold down the string because With this bar chords you really got to get to that C and that's right where like your finger kind of Pops out a little bit with a knuckle. So sometimes you don't get that C Which is the only third that's in this shape So that because so you want to make sure that you bar that off straight Yeah, and if you play the whole bar chord and another thing is a lot of people put their finger like this because they want Just the tip of their finger here because they used to playing like that And so they and if you do that then it might be harder to you're gonna get a Space here so what so what you do is you want to lay down this finger and put as much meat over the top as you need To to get a shape You don't have to put the tip of your finger on the top string right because you're trying to bar off with Like the ridge you also kind of want to lean back possibly a little bit To get that bar in close to the close to the fret however You may not need the whole the whole bar shape often times right because we only we only need three notes out of it So let's deconstruct the the bar shape here So we could say one of the most common ways to play it would be like this right so we can do something like this and and then That's a pretty comfortable shape now It's a little bit inverted because you don't have the a on the lowest one here But it's still pretty easy to play and some people Like to play that like to work with their thumb up top so you can actually still grab that a Up top and it's usually a more comfortable position and you're more likely to get to that C Of course because you're hitting the C on with your most dependable finger the good old pointer finger here So that's what I use a lot because that's just nice and easy to play right? So if you're down here, and I'm targeting this C or this a I could play my a down here And then you can end it right there Work your way back and forth Instead of targeting just that note you can target that whole little shape and you can use your finger up If you want to get that bass in there if you hit an open e that's fine, too I usually mute that string or try to Play it if I want to play it and so there so that's going to be a Useful shape in my opinion and then down here. You also have the inversion So you could play just these three, but if you just play those three, it's an a but it's gonna be higher And register and you have to make sure you ring out that bottom one because that's actually the root Here's the root. Here's the fifth. Here's the third So it's gonna give you a different sound higher in tone if you're playing with a band or something That might be useful because it's got it doesn't have as low of the bass notes in there And you can still get to that. It's kind of an interesting sound You pull up like that D shape you pull in that F Triangle type shape and then you drop it back to the to the A there and then after you play that you can always Go back to this shape So I'm just pivoting from the bottom of the bar chord because remember this whole thing is just being deconstructed from that bar Chord and then to the middle of the bar cord by playing these ones and then to the top of the bar cord if you want to Thumb that that top bit So that's gonna be it. That's often a useful construction and then you could build it up here. Here's my A and Here's my E and then there's gonna be my C again This is another inversion But it's gonna be a heavier sounding one meaning the root is on the bottom and remember there's always a fifth whether it be major or minor above the root and Then you've got the third which is two strings up and one to the right So now the the root is on the bottom So I can play something like that Is you kind of that heavier type of sound so if I was to be noodling like to be up here There's that A on the bottom with these strings with these three strings and then I can noodle to the middle Here's the A in the middle I can noodle up to this one and back Hey Hey Hey on the top and then of course when you're playing this a here Sometimes it's easy if you don't play the full bar to just see it as a power chord, right? So I could the full the full bar would be like this and have to bar it off to get down to there But if you're like oh, that's hard and then you don't play it at all you could still play it because You can you can play just the power chord But you're not gonna get the feeling of that of the full thing because you're not gonna get to that C down down here Now one another useful little thing with the a which is useful is That you could get to see on this side. So notice that the minors are The third is a nice Distance away with a major third. It's a little bit of a reach both a minor third It's just the four frets away. So notice when I'm playing a Power chord wherever you have an A here. You've got your fifth down here and then the third is Four frets up. So that's so you can kind of play basically your a minor by just switching You're arpeggiating And that's basically what we're doing over here when I when I Go from when I kind of do my cheater Pattern on the a minor and I'm going from here Open a to the C right That if I have the the e and the open a that's a power chord and then I'm closing it out with the C You can think of it as going to the C This is like a part of the C major or you can think about it as completing the a minor So when I'm down here playing these two just these two strings So that's the power chord and then adding the third right there So you're basically doing that here if you play just the power chord Now I'm adding the third You could do that anywhere I could do it here Anywhere there's an a right you could do you could do that same That same little shuffle pattern so that again I kind of like that in the minors because it's easier to do that in the minors because the third Is more reachable than when you're on a major a major third so So you could do that kind of kind of stuff on it Okay, so so there are those and then of course you could reach up Uh this way Right that which isn't fully in the shape, but we talked about how you could basically build Whoop You can reach up backwards this way or you can play it like this right and just get the root and the third Okay, so now then of course we could target other notes in here So if I picked up some if I wanted to target the C We have to be careful on the C because we don't want it to make it sound like it's in the key of C major But the C is also in the minor. It's the third of the minor. So our C's are here and here and here so if I was Going open position I can noodle in There's a C and then I can end it There's a C and then I can end it with this a which is you know this from here here here There's a C I go back to the A over here There's a C There's my A minor here. So I'm going back home to that A minor There's a C Going back home to there. So then we can say what if I play the E the fifth So there's a fifth. There's a fifth So I can say my E's Are going to be here and here so I can be like, okay There's the there's my E right there And then I can go There's an E Power chord A Add in the third Here's my full A A minor There's my E There's my A minor E Back to the A minor and open and then we could choose something that's outside Entirely like an F for example, but that's not even in the pentatonic So you're getting a little bit risky to pick, you know, like an F like maybe something like a D might be a safer move So we could say let's do the safer move here. And so the D's are going to be here and here So if I was like There's a D There's a D There's a D back to my A minor There's a D A minor A minor A minor pentatonic adding that third A minor On the bar, so so it's just some things that we can noodle around with There so and again, I think that the A minor like It's notice just to see the shuffle pattern here with with these now that you can see the one the four and the five So we have this like if you did this little shuffle pattern here You can alternate between the one four five In the minors, right? So if I did this shuffle pattern here I could do the same thing by going down Then to the D. There's the one now. I'm going to go to the four Shuffling back between the power chord and completing the chord, right? There's the D There's the A and then I'm shuffling to the F. So I can do that down here I'm just playing two strings and just going back and forth and then I can go back to do that to the A to the C or closing up And then I can do that with the E Because if I go back up to the E you have that open E going from the power chord closing it out with the G And then back to the usually the pattern if you're playing the kind of normal pattern it would go back to the D And then back to the A, but you don't have to play the normal kind of pattern you could You could just do whatever you want But but you're just playing the one four five when you do that Which is kind of fun to do that. We've learned all those See I just follow my I followed the string in and ended it with that A right here, right? So now I'm just ending it. I'm just putting a little extension on that To to to this string out here. Okay, so that's the general thing now we could Before we went and said well with all these other chords We then went back and said well, why don't I look at the relative the relative minor D the relative minor E We don't need to do that with the A because Because we're looking at The minor in other words if I constructed something from a major scale like the C major scale The one chord is going to be in the C major when I go to the two chord We can think about playing it But then we would be playing in a mode the dorian mode Or we can switch our entire mind to be switching to be playing it in in In a D minor Because that's such a D minor such a common thing to do when we're playing a D minor Chord here and same with the E, you know all all of the other ones here But when we're looking at the six this is you know, the the minor Construction so when I think about this shape that we're looking at up top Then we can use this same shape We're in the same shape right I can use the same shape and think about it as a C Or an A minor, but when you do that when you think about it as a C You don't want to be starting and playing it with the top to bottom with the A You kind of want to be thinking There's my tonic on the C and I'm playing the scale up and back from The C in other words you might play the same scale And think in your mind am I playing in the key of C and if you are Then you should be starting and stopping on a C All right, and if you're playing it in the key of A Then you kind of want to think in your mind that you're starting and stopping in the key of A They're all the same notes, but you want to be you kind of want to be targeting Uh, and so you can see you could see what scale you're in even as you're doing you're kind of uh You're just you're practicing up and down the scale because then you're not thinking I'm just playing a scale I'm thinking I'm playing the scale and I'm focusing I'm thinking of it as a minor or the C major