 Guitar and Excel. Open chords, C major scale, F major chord, fingering. Get ready because it's time for our guitar skills too. 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 build this from a blank worksheet, you may want to begin back there. However, you don't necessarily need this workbook if looking at this from a music theory standpoint because we will simply use it as a tool to map out the fretboard, give us the related scales and chords that we're focused in on. If you do have access to this workbook though, there's currently four tabs down below, two example tabs, an OG tab and a blank F tab. The OG tab representing the original worksheet we put together in a prior section, it now acting as our starting point, showing the entire fretboard, giving us the full musical alphabet, mapping out the scale that we're working in on and giving us our worksheets to the right in multiple formats. We then copied this over to focus in on, in this case, the C major scale in the open position and then further focus in on the chords in the C major scale represented by the example tabs. We started out with the key of C, minimizing the fretboard to just see the frets 0, 2, 3 open positions and then we minimized so that we can see the worksheet on the right hand side, giving us the scale as well as the chords that we're focused in on when we were looking at the one chord. Now we're going to move to the four chord and do a similar process. Last time we copied over the OG tab to the blank F tab, did the similar thing, meaning we minimized the fretboard to look at just the frets 1 through 3. We're still in the key of C now as we focused in on the F that is now the four of the key of C. We're going to look at the fingering but there's a couple things we just got to keep in mind as we're playing these chords. So in this case, we constructed the key of F from the C major scale but when we start to talk about what's included in an F chord, we're going to say it's going to be relative to the F major scale. So in other words, when we constructed this four chord, what we did is start with the F here and pick every other note. So we have the F, skipped a note, we've got the A, skipped a note, we've got the C. We constructed it from this scale which is a C major scale. But notice when I talk about the positions, I'm not going to say it's a four of the C major scale generally. You could and you could start to see it that way but you're usually not going to say it's the four, it's the six and the one. You could map it out that way and try to think of it that way to understand it but what you're really going to usually say is it's going to be the one three five. It's the one three five not of the C, it's the one three five of its related scale if we had an F major scale. So to take a look at that real quick, let me show you that we're going to go to the OG tab over here and let's just change this worksheet to an F and an F is absolute position number nine. So I'll just put a nine here and then we'll see our worksheet over here and it's now mapped out in the key of F. And so now F is the one chord where if I construct it from the one chord you get the F, A and C. That same F, A and C is what we built over here. We just built it from the C major. It happens to be also in the C major but when we talk about it, we're going to be talking about it in terms of it being referenced to the relative reference of its major. And that's why we have the F, A and C as the one three five. Also note that I didn't go down from one to two because when we go to two we're going to get to a minor. And I'd like to first take a look at the one four five because those are going to be the major positions and it's useful to keep in your mind when you're kind of noodling around to play the majors together in the one four five. A lot of blues stuff is played in like a one four five and it also will have relative positions that you'll kind of recognize because you'll be playing the same relative positions when you look at the intervals between the one and the three and the five. So you'll recognize the shapes a little bit more easily on the guitar. Okay, so now let's we have the one three five of the F so it's mapped out over here and just like we saw with the C we can just grab any of these three items and we would be playing an F. Now there's one more thing we got to we got to put out there with the F in particular and that is that you can think about this as the open position F in a sense. And in another sense, you can think about the fact that F doesn't actually have a true open position. In other words, this I can think about this as my open position F, because I'm playing the F this is how you would play the F when you're in the the the frets of one through three. So if I'm switching from an open C to an open F within these frets, I have these opportunities to do that. So in that sense, it's an open position F. However, in another sense, there is no open position F. And the reason is because when I play this position, I'm not I don't need I don't have to have any of the open notes over here in order to play it usually with a lot of the open positions. The the root note is actually one of the open notes, not always, but that's often the case. And there is no F over here in our open notes. Now you might say, Well, yeah, we just did the C, though, and there's no C in the open notes either. And we and the C is certainly an open position that we looked at last time. And that's true. And on the C, if I go over to the C, just to take a look at that, when we made this the C position, it looks like this. The reason it's an open position is because when you play it this way, you have to have that open G in order to make it work. Otherwise, you would be missing the fifth. So the C, although the C is not the open note is still an open position because one of the three notes that are required. This G when you're playing a normal C is an open note, right? So technically that would be an open position over here when I play this shape, then, which is the normal shape. So if you open this up and play that A, but normally if you play this shape, there is no open string that you need in order for it to work. It's also important to note then that this is a bar shape. This is a classic type of bar shape. So you can think of it as an open F in one sense, but you also want to think of it as like an augmentation of this E. So an E looks like this. And so when you move that position up, you could see that shape that I'm fingering right here. You could see that same shape right here. I've just moved it up from here to here. And the reason that's important to note is because we're actually playing when we play this F open position, we're actually playing an E shape that has been moved up to basically a bar chord. And you want to keep that in mind because when we start to talk about the caged system, when we start to talk about moving these shapes up, you're typically going to want to think about this as an E kind of shape that got moved up into a bar position. But you can also still think of it as an open position F because this is how you would play the F generally when you're in these one through three places when you're trying to switch from an open C to an open F. Okay, that said, then there's a couple of different ways that we can play this. Now, the most difficult way to play this is the full bar chord. So this is a classic bar chord where we're taking an E shaped bar chord that looks like this. And instead of having the nut right there taking care of the bar strings, that's why the E isn't... We're going to move it up to here, but then I have to bar this off. See how that worked? Now I had to switch my fingers from here. I go up to here, but now I have to bar this off to fix it. So I got to switch these fingers to that and then bar this off. Now that's a fairly difficult thing to master. So you can practice that. If you can't master that, that's okay. There's other ways to play this shape as well. But you kind of want to see that as the full shape right there because you're playing all six strings. This is a classic bar chord, major bar chord shape. Just a couple of techniques on the bar chords. I could talk about more of this later, but you might... Sometimes people are too low on the bar chord like this. And I find that if you put your finger as high as you need to, if the meat of your finger is hanging over, that's fine. You might have to move your finger up, making it easier to ring out all the strings. You want to keep this as close to the fret as possible. It'll be easier to play that way on that, and then you can try to ring those out. If you get the first one, two, three, four to ring out and you can't get these last bits to ring out, you're still okay because you've got to get to that A. And the A is pretty easy to get to ring out because you're fingering the A. So if you get everything to ring out just to the first four strings, you're at least playing a full F, even if you don't get those last two strings to ring out. So that's the main shape. Now also just note that this is a difficult bar chord because it's on the end. Like if you play that bar chord up here, sometimes it's easier because you're not... the frets aren't as spaced out. So if you don't have as big of hands, then it might be more difficult to play it here. But when people learn that F bar chord, they're often quite proud justifiably so because it's a difficult thing. And then if you play the F like a different way or something like this or this, sometimes people look down on you. They're like, ah, that's because they can't grab the full bar chord. But just note that that's not generally always the case that the full bar chord is the best way to go all the time because you don't have as much flexibility with the full bar chord sometimes. You can't do as hammer-ons as easy with your pinky. You have to have pretty strong hands to do a hammer-on and doing that kind of thing. Whereas if you grab it like this, you have a lot more flexibility. You're still using your pinky, but this is a lot easier to do than this. You have no leverage to do a hammer-on like this, whereas you do like this. So don't feel, I use this position a lot and even though I can do the bar chord because I find it more flexible. So don't let people discourage you. Like, well, you're doing the cheater way of doing this. Well, no, it's a very useful way to do it. Even if you can't do the bar chord, it's still useful doing that. So that's the other way that we can look at it. We can look at it like this. And then if you analyze that, you could say, I picked this finger up and I put it down here. Now I'm just borrowing off that one string and I'm abandoning this top string. So that means I don't want it to ring out. Then I'm going to mute it with my thumb. I typically use my thumb to mute it. You can also mute it with this finger. And now you've just got these strings. So I'm going to say, copy, copy this and paste. So now you would just be doing this bit right there, fingering that. And then you'd be muting the E and muting this string down here. That's still a pretty full chord. So it's still pretty heavy chord, even though you don't have all five strings ringing out, you still have a good amount of the strings ringing out. Now the other way you can play it is this way, just grabbing these three. And this one, in this way, notice what you have here is the F is the lowest note. So that's the advantage. So when you play the full bar chord, the advantage of the full bar chord is you get that heavy F on top, which really lays the base foundation of it. If you do it this way, to get the F as the lowest note, you have to do it like this and then you can mute this string with the meat of your finger here or you can try to reach it with your thumb. I tend to like to do stuff with my thumb, but if you're doing classical stuff, you probably want your thumb back here, in which case you don't want to hit this string up top and then you can mute this string with the flat of your finger. And if you're doing picking stuff or finger stuff, it's probably not as much of a problem. But I tend to like to just, and the evening is just kind of strung away, so that means I'm going to try to mute whenever I don't want to ring out. So I use my thumb oftentimes just reaching over the top like that. So that's another way you can play it. Now, we learned last time that right above the root note is the fifth and that's why you can pick this one up. So if you play it like this, it's very common to play like this and what that means is now it's nice. It's still an F, but now the top note is a C instead of an F. That's okay. You're still playing an F because you're still playing an F, A, and a C, but the top note is a C. Now, the reason this is useful is because I really like this shape because it fits your hand quite nicely just like the C does. It just fits an easy shape on the hand and then it's also very easily movable because you're playing something that can move up and you're not showing any of the open strings. So I find that to be really movable and it's flexible because you can lift up your fingers more easily than lifting up your fingers like this. You can do it this way too, but it's more easy to do that. Those are going to be the normal kind of fingerings that you will see on this. You can also do the fingering down here and so if you were playing the F down here, you'd have these two strings and this one and that could be a good fingering when you're playing on top of something else. We don't want it to be really heavy. This is a really heavy. If you're playing that with something else, then you're going to drown out whatever else you're playing. But if you're playing on top of something else and you want to play something that adds that doesn't completely drown out and an F you can play something down here. Now just like what we saw before with the key of C, we're now, if we're thinking about this as the four of the key of C, then all of the open notes are still good. But the tricky thing about that is that you would generally, if you're in the key of C, you'd be playing like a C which would be here and then switching to an F. I'm going to use this shape because I think it's the easiest one to start out with. But you could do it this way. See how that switches a little bit more difficult? But you could do it because you get that heavy one. If you're going from this C to this F that's an easy switch to make. It's very nice on the fingering. And then of course, if we're in the key of C, then all of the open notes will still work. Meaning if I'm playing this F, I can lift up a finger and reveal the open note. So I can say, okay, what if I'm playing the F like this and I lift up that pinky? Well, if I lift up the pinky, I still have the F down here. So I'm still really playing like an F, but I'm revealing the D. And the D is kind of tensiony because that's the 13 if we're playing the 13 right there, if we're playing in the key of C. We'll talk about that later. But if you're playing in the key of C, it should still be something you can do. It won't be out of touch totally. And then you can do it here and you can say, well, what if I pick up this A I pick up my finger. Well, then you revealed a G, which is like the nine when we're thinking of it as the four of the key of C, right? And then I can say, well, what if I picked up this C? Then you're going to be revealing the B, which is like a seven if we're thinking of it in terms of the four of the key of C. So you can start to play. But normally you'd want to be going from the C because the C is your center still if I'm thinking about playing in the key of C. And then you can noodle around there. Right? And then go here. Back to the C. I'm just lifting up fingers. And back to the F. Just testing out what it sounds like if I lift up fingers and I peggi- or I peggiated and whatnot and have different strumming styles as I go from the C to the F. And then, of course, when you're using a C you could do a different C. You can do it like this. Notice another way you can play the F is just these three notes. So I could go from here to C. You could try different, basically strumming patterns there. Now, note that if you're just playing the key of F but you're thinking about it as though you're in the key of C, right? Then, like, you're just playing the key of F but you're not really going to a C. You're just doing this, but then you're revealing notes that are in the key of C. What you're doing there is playing basically- you're basically playing a different mode. So in other words, this is easier, I think, to look in terms of the circle. So here's our notes in the key of C in the format of a circle. The one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. And usually we're focused around the C if we're playing the major scale in the key of C major. But if we keep going back to an F, we're just basically playing an F and then noodling around in the notes that are all in the key of C, you're basically playing a different mode. So it's pretty easy to do. You can do that. It's a fun thing to do, but you want to keep in mind when you're practicing that you're basically playing the F as the four chord over the key of C. And if you're not going back to the key of C as the tonic, then you're basically kind of playing in a Lydian mode. So let's take a look at the modes on the right. The modes are mapped out on the right, including the related minor, which is an A. And then we've got the Dorian, and then we've got the Phrygian, and then we've got the Lydian. So you can think of the Lydian now, which now has the F as the one, is basically related, this Lydian mode, this F Lydian is related to the C major. So now you can think of it as the one, but all the notes in this scale are the same notes as the key of C. So it's useful to kind of practice that way. You can kind of practice that, but when you do that, when you start playing around like, and I'm just playing the key of F and I'm lifting up fingers, I have to be mindful that the reason all of these strings can fit, the way I'm thinking about it right now at least, is because I'm playing this chord in relation to the key of C as the four note in the key of C. So that's useful to keep in mind. Now you could say, well, what if I want to switch to the key of F? You could do that and we'll talk about maybe looking at the key of F later, but for right now I just want to note that this shape is movable. So we looked last time in the key of C, if I went over here, that we can move this shape up to the one four five. So if you were playing the key of C and we'll talk more about this kind of stuff later, but just note that this shape is just something to play with. When we were playing the key of C, I could move up here to the four and the five. So if I moved it up to right there, now I'm playing the same shape, but now I'm playing an actual F chord and then I can move it up here and I can say, okay, now I'm playing a G with the C shape. And that's a fun thing to just be able to play with to move up and you could start to play with that using these same shapes. Now you can do that in the key of when you're looking at an F chord, but if that F, you can move that F shape up to a G in order to pick up the G, or you can try to augment your mind to thinking about it as the key of F, which is kind of easier to do, because then you can think of it as the one four five. So let's try to map that out with the wrapper minds around that here. So I'm going to unhide from D to AK, right click and unhide. I'm going to go down to the bottom where we have some worksheets that have not been populated yet. And then I'm going to go to the right and let's, so that looks good. So now I can go down here and say, I also need to unhide from 101 to 117. Actually, no, let's keep it, keep it here. And then it'll hide some of the fretboard. I'll hide from the 12th. We'll just go out some more frets to start off with. So I'll go from the 12th over to my worksheet, right click and hide. So there we have it. And so I'm going to do the same thing to start out with. I'm going to select the entire worksheet. I'm going to scroll out a little bit and I'm going to map out the same thing we did before. So I'll highlight the whole worksheet and I'm looking at the key of F. Let's copy this down here first. I'm going to copy that so I can see where I'm looking at. I'm looking at that for and then I'll map this out like we did before, selecting this area and then conditional formatting. This is going to be equal to an F, which I'm going to make green and then OK and then conditional formatting equal to an A, which will be red and then equal to a C, which I'm going to make yellow. And then I'll map that over here by saying that the F format paint is the one and then the A format paint is the three and then the C format paint is the five. So there we have it. So you can see this shape up top. So there's going to be our starting shape. Now if I move that up to a G, let's map out the G, which is right next to it right here and let's highlight the whole thing and just make that a different color. So I'm going to insert or not insert home tab, format paint and say that this is going to be equal to, let's say, a blue. Let's say that's going to be the G is this and well let's actually do it on another worksheet. Let's do it down here. This will be easier to see. I'll paste it down here and we'll look at the next one, which will be the G and then I'll map it out. So let's map that out and so we'll go home tab, format painter is going to be equal to the one of the fifth, which I'll make that green and then I'm going to say format painter of the B will make that red, format painter equal to the D will make that yellow and OK. And so now I can see in this G position right here, there's my shape as well. So same kind of shape. So I can see it right here when I'm playing the F and because the next chord is a major as well, then I can follow, I can find my, what I want to do is follow the root note here. So I'm looking at this F and I'm trying to find where the G is on that string. It's right there. So then I can move this shape up because this shape will be symmetrical around it. So if you're playing in the key of C, another way that you can play a G then I can say, OK, this is the 4 and the key of C, which is that F and I can move it right there. And so now you can kind of noodle around. Now another way you can play a G is like this, but it's useful to play it two ways, right? I can play it like this or I can play it like this and I can move up any of those any way I want to play it. I can play the F like this and I can move that up to, you know, the G position and this G position I can construct it down and make it like that which is kind of the easier thing to start moving or I can play it like that. Same, or I can play it like that. Same kind of options we had before and then move this back down to the F. So if you're noodleing around you can go from the C to F to G this way. Play just these three and so we can kind of noodle that around. Now the next one is a C up top, the one. So let's look at it, let's look at this one. I'm going to copy this and put that up top and say now we're looking at the one, looking at the C. So if I say, okay let's map that out and say this is going to be equal to the C green and then I'm going to say okay and then this is going to be equal to the E which is that and then I'm going to say this is going to be equal to the G which will make yellow and let's, well that's not yellow and then I'll map this out like this, we'll say there's the green there's the E and there's the G I should have done that up here too maybe there's this the B and then the D so I can say, okay well we're like if I'm looking at this string that had the F on it, that string is what I'm kind of mapping the shape around when I look at it up here if I'm moving that up where's the C on that string, well it's up here so I'm going to say okay if I scroll down the C is up there so I should be able to move the shape up to here, this is another way that we can play the C so I can move it all the way up to that 8th position and I should be able to play it that way so if I'm playing my F I can move it up here to play the G and then I can move it all the way up to the 10 and I get another kind of C voicing up top which is nice and of course you can move any of those shapes because this is basically a bar chord so you could move it up here like this you could move it up here like this you could play just these three strings and it's nice to be able to play this and you can start to noodle around and I can do that same and I can just play a noodle around within that shape, I added another note which we'll talk about next time in the pentatonic shape so if you're playing in the key of C and you're looking at that 4 so you can play it from here you can move it up here where you're playing the related mode and using F like the root and the mode and then you can move up to here and start noodleing around that way now one more thing just to note that if you wanted to just look at these movable shapes and you saw it in terms of being in the key of F let's copy this down I'll copy this down, we're running out of space I'm going to unhide some cells right click and then I'm going to just copy I'm going to copy from here down to here copy and I'll paste that underneath and I'm just going to change this then to the key of F so we'll say I have my scale over here wait I need to unhide again I got to unhide between L and K right click and unhide and then I'm going to scroll out a bit so I can see what's going on here that 4 key I'm going to change to an F so now I'm just going to change it completely to an F which is a 9 so now I'm in the key of F so now we've got our worksheet in the key of F that's going to be our 1 note now so now I'm going to hide everything again so I'm going to go on over and I'll hide from 12 on over to here and right click and hide and then let's look at this worksheet I'm going to remove the conditional formatting that started by going and remove clear the rules clear the rules I've had it up to here with your rules no more no more I say ok how come I can't clear that one I need to clear the conditional formatting this way ok so now we can imagine moving this up if you were playing in the key of F just to play the 145 which sometimes is pretty easy to kind of think about you just want to convert your mind to saying now I'm playing in the key of F this up according to the 145 with it as the root versus me playing in the key of C the F being the four note in there right so now I'm going to say let's map this out so let's try to do this piece by piece so the F we saw starts from here to here so I'll map that out and I'll say this is going to be equal to this note as the green one and then this is going to be equal to this note as the red one and then this is going to be equal to equal to this note as the yellow one so boom boom boom and so there we have it and I'll format paint that over here F and then the A and then the C so that would be position one if you're playing in the key of F so I'll say there's that and really it's you're kind of playing right here really and then I'm going to copy that and say okay I can do the 145 so I can say the four is over here and that's going to be on the A sharp or the B flat so you'd think okay right there I should have another position that I can kind of move up to don't let the sharps and flats scare you too much because they're just other notes if you numbered them it's a two so then I can see and that's why the key of C is nice because you don't have the sharps and flats that kind of are intimidating but if I moved it up here I can say equal to then this one as the green one and when I move it up there it's the one relative to this chord and then I'm going to say this is going to be equal to then the D is going to be red and then this will be equal to the F which is going to be yellow and okay and then I'll format paint this over here I'm going to seem to be missing something hold on I did it the wrong way let me undo undo I need it to be that's the end point so it needs to be going facing this way alright let's do that again pardon me this is going to be equal to this which will be the green and then this will be equal to this which will be the red and then this one is going to be equal to this which will be the yellow and boom and so now you've got the green let's make that here and then the this one the red let's make that here and then this one is going to be this one let's make that here okay and then I can try to do this one more time and say this one is here on the C the one four five relative positions and I can say here's the key of C right there and I can say let's highlight this then and say conditional formatting equal to if it's a C now that's going to be the green and then equal to if it's the E it's going to be red and then if it's equal to the G it's going to be yellow hold on it didn't do the yellow if it's equal to G it's going to be yellow alright and then I'll have the same condition the same formatting here this is going to be the C this is going to be the E and then this is going to be the G so right so now you can do the same thing so now if I look at this first position I'm looking at that root typically or if you're playing it this way you're usually looking at this as the root if you're playing it this way you're usually looking at kind of this string as the root which is kind of what I'm looking at right now generally and then if I moved it up to the next position where is the root it's up here on the eighth fret that's where the next root is on this string so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 boom moving it up to there so you can start and then where's the next root happening on that string it's right here on the 10th fret so if this is 8, 9, 10 I can move it up to here and you'll see that these distances are relative to the 1, 4, 5 in the key of C that we talked about so you can start to see how far up the fretboard is the 1, 4, 5 if you start in like the open position for example and then of course you can do the same thing like this the full bar chord which you could practice playing it's a more difficult thing to hold down typically and now I'd say this is that 1, 2, 3, 4, the 6th fret that's the next where you get to the next root right so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 boom and you can see when I play that the same as what I did before I just put my finger down here and mute the top so when I do that then this is the main root versus this being the main root these are the same notes and then when I move it up to here moving it up to the 8th right there and so this is the same root as this so this is the same thing as this you can also play it with just these 3 strings mute everything else and so when you start to move that that's useful to do just remember whether or not you're still in the key of C in which case you'll play the positions relative to the key of C you'll be going from the 4 to the 5 to the 1 and you can think of that in the key of C and you can think of that as a different mode if you wanted that would be the modes that you would be in you could do it that way or you can switch the key entirely which isn't our point of focus now but it's a useful thing to know just switching your head that now you're playing this in the key of F F now being the 1 chord and you're playing the relative 4 and 5 which will have the same shape up on the neck of the guitar here