 Guitar and Excel. A minor scale fret number 7 intervals. Get ready and some coffee and remember, you can pick your friends and you can pick your guitar, but you can't pick your friend's guitar. No wait, that's probably not true. But you would want to ask permission first, I would think. Dang it. This is bringing back traumatic memories. Of that time I said that old adage while teaching a math class of you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose. At which point, two lovely young ladies in the first row proved me totally wrong. And then apparently to drive the point home, one of them flicked their friends booger at me, which I felt was entirely unnecessary. Although not exactly abnormal in classrooms these days. Yeah, it was difficult convincing the class that two plus two did indeed equal four after being so thoroughly proven wrong about the not being able to pick your friends nose thing. But whatever, I will not be intimidated by boogers. I will keep on calculating. I will calculate in the classroom. I will calculate on the beaches. I will calculate in the interwebs. No matter how many booger barrages are flicked at me, never surrender the right to plain logic using simple arithmetic. That's what I say. So let's do some interval calculations. 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 presentations. So if you want to build this from a blank worksheet, you could 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 scale, the chords that we're focused in on. If you do have access to this workbook though, there's a bunch of tabs down below including the O.G. Orange tab representing the original worksheet we put together in a prior section. It now acting as our starting point, mapping out the entire fretboard, giving us the entire musical alphabet in letter format, number format, letter and number format, providing an adjustable key that can be changed with this green cell to the scale that we want to be in for the worksheet constructions on the right, the worksheets providing the notes in the scale, the chords constructed from the notes in the scale, interval, information and more. We then have been focusing on the C major scale first looking at open position from the perspective of chord constructions. That's what all the yellow tabs are over here. So we of course started with the one chord, the C major chord mapped it out open position which we're defining as frets one through three and we went through the other chord constructions, the four chord the F, the five chord the G major, then we went back to the two chord the minor and then we went to the to the E minor and then we went to the six which is an A minor and then the diminished B diminished. We then jumped to the middle of the guitar so that we can now think about this position from the perspective of a scale as opposed to first think of it, thinking of it from a chord construction perspective and then we thought about how we can connect what we did on the frets one through three in a chord perspective to our finger in position from a scale perspective in the middle of the guitar and we discussed that from once again the C, the F, the G, the D, the E and the A and now we're going to be looking at the next position so we then started looking at the next position. We first thought of it in terms of the pentatonic scale and mapping out the position five and on fret five or I would call it position one starting on fret number five and now this new position we've been looking at is position number two or you can call it an E shaped position which starts on fret number seven or you could start it on the C right here but it's going to be going from fret seven to ten so I would say it starts on fret seven. We then added from the pentatonic the two major notes so the blue notes represent the major notes the green notes represent the pentatonic notes this was our position five if I extend this out this is the overlap that we have between what I would call position one and fret five so if I'm confusing that it's position one what I would call it fret number five you can also call it a G shaped position and there's an overlap between it and what I would call position number two or the E shaped position. I'm going to move this out so we could just see the part that's not overlapped over here in the first position now we might call this position over here an E shaped position why is that because it would be a C chord constructed but if I construct this standard bar chord it's in the format of of an E that you would typically play in open position in other words if I moved this shape back to here then that is what we would be fingering in open position here and then the bar would be the nut so if I take that shape and adjust to the fingers to put it up here then that's where you have that E shape now remember that that E type shape will in essence be unique to the pentatonic shapes that's why you can name this shape you can name this entire shape based on just the chord shape which only has three out of the five notes in the pentatonic and then you can also extend that out to add it to be including the entire major shape however you have to be careful noting that this chord shape will fit in other major shapes although it will be unique to the pentatonic shape okay so we've discussed that in prior presentations we then went through the scale in terms of fingering the scale and we talked about the intervals in terms of the C major now I just want to do this interval thing again this time not from the major perspective but looking at it in terms of the minor perspective so we have the same scale here we thought of it as major one of the ways we did that is we started on the C and then we talked about the construction of the whole whole half whole whole half so now what we're going to do is say let's look at the other mode the most common other mode is going to be the minor and then we'll we'll go through the intervals and count through the scale from the minor it's going to be the same scale I'm going to start it from here however leading into our scale so we could start with the the one note in a minor chord construction and as we do that we'll also look at these intervals again so remember that we talked about these these notions when we use these terms the one the three the five the seven of our chord we get an idea of what those mean and and we also want to look at the absolute intervals when we say it's a it's a one three five seven and so on these intervals could differ and we can see where they differ on a minor chord construction from a major chord construction and then you can do the same thing with the other modes although we probably won't be doing the other modes so let's give a quick recap remember this exercise I would I would practice doing this kind of thing like in the morning when your brain is kind of working you want to do more analytical type of stuff possibly and then in the evening hopefully have it kind of sink in if you if you're noodling around on the guitar at that point in time that I think that's a good way to do it because we're trying to keep straight all of these different numbering systems so let's list them out again we've got a numbering system for the letters in the musical alphabet which could be in letter format and or number format we have a numbering system that will number the relative positions of the scale we have a numbering system that could include an added dimension using Roman numerals allowing us to have capital and lowercase given us an indication as to whether it's a major scale or minor the capital being major the lowercase being the minor and then we have our interval notions over here that we want to discuss and the absolute intervals that we want to discuss in relation to those intervals so let's do a quick recap of our musical alphabet so if I go to the og tab the musical alphabet there's only 12 notes if you think about them in letter format you've got the a if you're going up you usually go with the sharps a sharp b c c sharp d d sharp e f f sharp g g sharp and then back to a if you're going down the other way you're usually using the flats right so now you're going a a well g sorry it's a flat or a flat g g flat f e e flat d d flat c b b flat a would be the general idea now it's hard it's difficult for us to look at the intervals when we're when we see it that way there's different techniques that you can use to try to memorize the sharps and flats one of those being that the scales all have one letter a through g in the musical alphabet but then you have to remember where the sharps and flats are so that's a good technique to use but i really think if you can switch back and forth in your mind between the letter and the number if you just number the notes that's useful too if you don't want to do that it'll still be useful for our interval calculations to understand what these intervals are doing and you can use whatever methods you want to memorize that but i i think if you're memorizing all this stuff memorizing being able to go back and forth between a letter and a number allowing you to do some simple math is useful so the a would be a one the a sharp or b flat is a two so those are the same tone of the note the b is a three the c is a four c sharp or d flat is a five d is a six d sharper e flat is a seven e is an eight f is a nine f sharper g flat is a 10 g is an 11 g sharper a flat is the 12 once we have that we then constructed our music our our worksheet over here with the notes in the scale now last time we used our standard formula of whole whole half whole whole half but this time uh we're we're going to just change that by starting in a different location notice that it repeats after that if i start from this c i just repeated it it's like a circle right it's just circle whole whole whole half so whole whole half whole whole half and then it starts over again and so on if i just start it from a different point that's all we're doing with any of these other modes the minor mode is starting on the six so if i started on the six here and i just start it from there and this just keeps repeating now i have starting on the a uh let's map it out this way we have the a and that's going to be a one and then there's a whole step and that's two notes up to a three so one plus two is three three is a b and then we have the three plus one we have a half step three plus one is four four is a c and then four plus a whole step so four plus two is six six is a d and then there's a whole step six plus two is eight eight is an e and then there's a half step so eight plus one is nine nine is an f and then there's a whole step 9 plus 2 is 11 11 is a G and then there's a whole step so you get 11 12 and then back to the start which is 1 or 11 plus 2 is 13 13 minus 12 because there's 12 notes in the musical alphabet would be 1 so note that there's not really any change going on between our ultimate pattern if you zoomed out it's just where we're going to put our starting point and you can imagine this pattern going on forever you can also think about it in a circle format where I'm just we're where if you had all the notes basically in this kind of circle you'll or formula then you can do a you know a similar kind of of process where you're just going to keep on going around the circle right in a similar way as we did here but we only have the seven notes that we pulled over here to the circular process sometimes making a circle out of the out of out of it is easier than then thinking of it linearly and when you think about it linearly you could still get the concept of it repeating by basically thinking of it going out to infinity right this pattern goes out to infinity and I'm just going to basically start from different locations on that pattern and when I go when I go up from that particular location I get something different just because of the starting point that we're on so I'm and by doing that we're eliminating the concept of octaves right because you can think of the octaves going up like a spiral rather than a circle but the easiest way to visualize this tone wise is basically a circle or an infinite linear progression going out into the future okay so now I'm going to go back here let's hide some more of this so I can see a little bit more I'm going to hide to like the five right there right click and hide and then over here let's see if I can if I can hide I'm going to hide over from let's hide this a.g. I don't think I need that right click and hide that and maybe I can hide this one right click and hide that and then I want to get I'm going to hide from AT to the miners but I'd like to see this whole thing so right click and hide that so let's see how so so that's not going to totally work here so because it's not it's still not enough room I want to pull this in okay I've tried to make it as small as I can here so I can fit what I'd like to fit is this worksheet as well as the information in terms of the intervals here and then this worksheet is in the relative miner so what we've done here is we've taken this six and we pulled it over to make it the one now notice that all the cords that are constructed are the same everything is the same in terms of the cords that are going to be in it you can see here this is going to be a is a minor and then we've got the one for five of the miners which are AD and E over here you've got the a is a minor the D and the E the difference of course now being that the the the one is going to be the a which was the six before so this was the intervals when we started in a C major was the whole whole half whole whole half now we're going to start over here on the minor side and when we look at the minors then the intervals are going to be the whole half whole half whole whole and notice we don't get that half step basically that's going to be driving us home here so now we'll just go through the same kind of exercise looking at it on the guitar mapping through it and as we do that we want to basically look at the relative positions for the minor mode even though the shape is the same so we can look at it from the relative starting points and then you can also see up here when I name the cord the interval positions we usually say it's the one three five and you'll recall from our cord constructions that the three of a minor cord is only three absolute notes away as opposed to when I'm looking over here on the third for a major cord is four notes away so you can see some of the differences in those intervals so the the the one is zero notes away because obviously if you start on the C and we're talking about here starting on the C then it would be on the C no notes away here we're starting on the a as our starting point there's no notes away from the A and then when I go to the third now that's four notes away from the C when I look at the third over here it's three notes away from its starting point in this case being that a and then when I go to the fifth here it's seven notes away from the C when I look at the notes here it's still seven notes away from the see when I go to the seventh here it's 11 notes away when I look at a minor, it's 10 notes away. And notice I'm looking at note one of the scale in each of these, this being the C major, this being the A minor. And then when I go to the nine, it's two notes away, the nine over here, two notes away on the minor. And then I look at the 11 is five notes away from C here and the 11 here, five notes away. And then the 13, nine notes away, 13 over here, eight notes away. Also, remember that we're missing the interval between because we skip every other note, one, three, five. What about the two? Well, the two, there's only seven notes in the musical alphabet, so it goes up to seven. The two is equivalent to the nine. And then the two, the four, the evens, the four is equivalent to the 11 and the six is equivalent to the 13. So we'll kind of map that out as we go through these intervals as well. So it would be great, like this was our shape number one here. Whoops, not that. And then, so now the overlap is between these two right here. So this is where the new shape starts, noting that it starts on a B. So if you were just starting to play this shape, if you're just memorizing this shape, you'd start it right there. But you don't really want to start it on a B because that would be like you're playing in low Korean, right? So you probably want to, if you're thinking of yourself playing in the A minor, I'm going to start, I'm going to pull in this A from over here as my one and then go into my shape. So I'm going to say, I would start to say this out loud if I could. I'd say this is going to be a relative position number one. Here's the one of the A minor, which is note one or on A, right? And then I'm going to move from the A and we're going to go then to the B. So I'm going to go from relative position one to, hold on a second, to relative position two. Why did it do that thing right there? What happened? Hold on a second. So I'm going to say, relative position two is going to be a whole step away when I'm looking at the minor. So I'm going from note number one, which is an A plus two, one plus two is three. Note number three is a B. And instead of going from here to here with my fingering, I'm basically going to slide up to this position, right? Because I'm now moving, if I was playing in this position, I'd play it like that. But if I'm moving from this position to this position, I'm going to shift my fingers. So I'm going to go from this A and then slide into the position that I'm really working in on. And then the two would be the B. So then I'm going to go from the two to the three. So let's see if I can pull this down. Is it possible? Oh, wait a second. Undo and pull this down and pull this down. And so then I wanted to do this this way so we can see the total. So now we're over here and we're going to say, okay, we're going from relative position two to three. That's going to be a half step. So we're going from note number three, which is a B plus one to note number four, and note number four is a C. And so there's that one. And if I look at these intervals now, when I was looking on the one, it's the one of a chord. If you're looking at the chord construction, the interval of one is actually zero notes away, right? Because it is what it is. You're on that step. When I go to the two, notice there is no two in my intervals up top because when I construct a chord, you usually skip the two, but you can still use it as a distance notation, right? So if I say there is a two, how far away is the two? The two is two notes away. And it was two notes away when I think about it in terms of this side or when I looked at it from a major in relation to the two notes away. In relation to the major note. And then when I look at the three, the three here, it's gonna be three notes away. So you can see it's gonna be the two plus one, it's gonna be three notes distance from the A. Whereas when I looked at the third over here, it was four notes away because we had a whole step, whole step, and that resulted, and that's one of our key differences that we have a four note away major third, a three note away minor third. Again, most people just memorize it as a major and minor and they kind of look at the guitar and look at the relatives you flat the third. And that's a good way to look at it, but it's useful to know the total intervals. This is kind of what we're trying to think about here. Okay, so now I'm getting distracted. I'm on this one, we're gonna go to the four. So we're gonna go do it and then I'll just pull this down to here and this down to here and then this down to here and then we're going from here to here. So we're going from relative position three, which is note number four or C up a whole step to relative position six, which is a D. So C four plus two is six and six is a D. So now we're on the D. Okay, and then the D, if I look at it, it's the four, right? And there is no four up top in our intervals when we did it on a chord construction because we skipped the four, but we can see here that the four would be two plus two plus one or five notes away. It was also five notes away over here because it was the two plus two plus one this way. So you end up with that absolute distance between the major and the minor. And you can see that, remember that the two is equivalent to the nine, which is two notes away. That's what this two is. And the four is equivalent to the 11, which is five notes away and it was five notes away over here as well. So if I copy this, let's see if I can look at the relative positions over here just so we can add both sides up. So okay, do, do, do, okay. And so then we're going from here to here. So I'm gonna say, okay, okay, I said it. Okay, stop saying, okay. But I said I was gonna say it and I do what I say. So I had to say, okay, because I said I was going to. And then I'm gonna say, okay, okay. So then we're gonna go from the D up to the E, but we're gonna go from pinky to pointer here. So now we went from relative position four to relative position five, which is a whole step, going from note number six, which is a D, up a whole step, which is six, seven, eight and note number eight is an E. So we could have gone to this E out here, but we're not gonna do that because it's outside the position four notes on a string and it would expand more than five frets. And we know that pinky to pointer on every interval except between these two strings is a whole step. So when I go from pinky to pointer, I'm going a whole step up, which is two notes, six, seven, eight. So then we're gonna go from here to here and we're gonna go dude and then dude. Oh wait, I wanna do the absolute position there. This was on, this is the E the fifth. So the fifth is here seven notes away, whereas the fifth over here also seven notes away, two, four, five, six, seven, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So a different combination of holes and halves, but you end up with a total distance of seven notes when we're looking at the fifth, whether the fifth be relative to the minor starting point, in this case of the A or the major starting point, in this case, the C. Okay, so now we're gonna go from here to here. So now we went from the E, we'll pull this down here, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude. And then we're gonna go here. So now we're going from relative position five to relative position six, which is going to be a half step. So we're going from note number eight, which is an E plus one, which is to note number nine, and note number nine is an F. So if I look at that six over here on the minor, there is no six up top. The equivalent to the six is the 13, which is eight notes away, which is two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Over here, the 13 was nine notes away, two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. So we have a difference between the major and the minor, at least on chord one, if you're constructing it from the first, the root of its relative chord, right? Then you have that distance there, or that difference there in the 13. Okay, let's go from here to here, dude, dude, dude, and we're gonna go, okay. Stop saying that. You better stop saying that. I'm gonna tune out right now. I'm gonna say okay again. I'm gonna say stop saying, I'm gonna say okay, is that okay? If you could stop saying, did I'm gonna say okay? Cause it's annoying. So okay, I'll do that. So then we're gonna say that this is gonna go from relative position six to relative position seven, which is gonna be a whole step, going from note number nine, plus two, nine, 10, 11, 11 is a G. So then, and if I go to the 11, so now this is two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 notes away, 10 notes away from the 11. And over here, it was two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 notes away, which you can see over here on the 11. So wait a sec, I had it over here was, sorry I got messed up. This is not the 11, the 11 is the notes. This is why we're doing it. So we're gonna get these numbers mixed up. It's the seven and the seven is 10 notes away versus the seven over here being 11 notes away. I apologize for that. And then we're gonna go from the seven around the horn. So we can think of it this way as going up another octave or starting over. So if you say it's going to eight, then you're basically saying that's the same or equivalent to going to the one, right? So we're gonna say, okay, it's gonna go, I did it again, I did it again. So we're going from seven to one and seven to one is gonna be a whole step going from note number 11, which is a G plus two, 11, 12, and then around the horn to one. So there's the one. And so then we could start this over and repeat the process so I can go up top and say we're starting up the one from another octave now and the one is down here this way. And so now we're gonna say that we start at the one again and just continue the process. So we're gonna say now we have the relative position number one going to relative position number two starting from note one, which is in A, going up a whole step. So we go up the whole step, one, two, three, plus two, is three, note number three is a B. Let's do this faster. We're gonna go do, do, here, and then here. And so now we're going from relative position two to relative position three, which is gonna be a half step going from note number three, which is a B plus one because that's what a half step is to note number four and note number four is a C. And then we'll go do, do, do, do. And so now we're going from relative position three to relative position four, which is a whole step going from note number four, which is a C plus two because that's what a whole step is, which would bring me to this D but I'm gonna go pinky to pointer bringing me to the D down here. Okay, so there's our D and then I'm gonna go okay. Oh my goodness. I didn't mean to do it. I'm trying to stop. I'm trying to stop. You should pick up smoking so you could stop saying that. Try smoking, that'll help. Okay, then we're gonna go, then let's go from relative position four to relative position five and we're gonna go from note number six, which is a D up a whole step, six plus two is eight. So six, seven, eight, and note number eight is an E. And so let's do it again, do, and then here, and then here, and then here, and then here. So now we're going from relative position five to relative position six, which is a half step starting from note number eight, which is an E plus one because that's what a half step is to note number nine, note number nine is an F. Okay, let's do it again, do here, here, and then now we're going here, here, relative position six to relative position seven, which is a whole step starting from note number nine, which is an F plus two would get us out to the G out here but now I'm going pinky to pointer, but wait, I can't go pinky to pointer for a whole step because of the kink between, so I have to compensate for the kink. So it would be pinky to pointer, but now I'm going pinky to the middle finger. So the middle finger is gonna throw you off, so you flip the middle on it and that corrects it. You flip the middle to compensate for the kink. So pinky to middle to compensate for the kink. And then we're gonna go from here to here and here to here, here to here, here to here, and that's gonna bring us back to the one. So we're gonna go from relative position seven to eight or back to the one, and that's gonna be a whole step. So we're going from G, I'm sorry, we're going from that G to the one. So it's 11, 12, one, which brings us around the horn to the A again. So there's our A, A, I know you, I've seen you before, and then we can keep going around. Notice if I keep going around this way, I would want to basically make sure I go back again to the A because I wanna keep my mind thinking that I'm starting and stopping on the bookings of the A, but I've gone too long at this point already, so I'll stop it here and just note that you might wanna do, I would recommend doing this like a little bit in the morning to the point where you can basically kind of do this with minimal reference to the worksheet, and you could possibly do this without the worksheet or even you can imagine it, or even possibly have something on an iPad or a phone or something that you can map out and just think about those positions and try to say it in your mind or out loud if you can so that you can basically map out these different modes so that you can see these positions that'll work on the notes and memorize the numbers of the notes and start to see these different formulas and work on these intervals, like what do these intervals mean? If you watch a lot of people that talk about how to teach people, they start to look at these, some people take the perspective of looking at everything from intervals, and when they do that, they're gonna be using these intervals and you've gotta be able to realize what the absolute position is in terms of absolutes because I think that'll be helpful to be able to determine what they're talking about when people are having these intervals. And we can talk later about the idea that we can start from a C major and just adjust the intervals on the shape of the guitar like you would going from a major to minor, flattening the third, for example, and see how that works. But you get a bigger picture of it if you can see what these intervals mean in terms of absolute intervals, in terms of how it relates to its relative root because then you're not just memorizing rules, you know the concept behind it and that'll give you a lot more flexibility to do things with it. So clearly you could do this with all the other modes, I could do this the same type of thing with starting on the D. And what I would do is find the D, I wouldn't start like we started on the A out here because I don't want to start on a B, right? So I started so we would start then on the D and maybe go back and then forward. So we're thinking of ourself on the two of the major, the relative two, which would be a Dorian mode, right? And then you can go and then you could start on the E. So you can find the E and you can map out make it the one using the exact same shape and then make it the one and you'd be doing the same kind of process. But it's really important to do that mainly for you would think the major and the minor because when people talk about the major and the minor, in particular, they're gonna be talking about it, they're not gonna be talking about the minor as the six of the major, they're gonna be talking about the minor from its relative positions with that as the one, with the relative six being the one. So if you're trying, again, if you're trying to follow along with what people are saying, you're gonna have to be able to convert that in your mind. If you were just noodling around, then you can kind of just make the six the one. You'll be, you could use that note, no problem. But if you're trying to understand what people are saying and then look at the intervals from perspective of this being the one and then try to figure what these intervals are meaning then you're gonna have to convert that to the one. And some practices like this in the morning, I think are good tools to help understand that.