 Guitar and Excel, open chords, C major scale, G major chord, intervals. Get ready and don't fret. Remember, the board's totally fretted already, so you need to be the calm one in the relationship. 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 access to 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 scale, and chords we're focused in on. If you do have access to this workbook, though, there's currently five tabs down below. We've got three example tabs, an OG tab and a blank G tab. The OG tab representing the original worksheet we put together in a prior section, you can see it now acting as the starting point going forward, mapping out the entire fretboard, giving us the entire musical alphabet and letters, numbers, and combining them for letters and numbers. Having an adjustable key where we can change the scale we're focused in on by changing the green cell, providing or creating the worksheets on the right hand side, giving us the scale that we're focused in on as well as the chords. We then wanted to focus on the key of C in this section and the chords that can be constructed from the notes in the key of C, starting of course with the C major chord, which is in the example C tab on the left hand side. We're focused on the open positions, which I'm defining as positions zero on the fretboard to three on the fretboard. We mapped out the one three five of the C major scale in that position and discussed it from multiple different angles. We then did a similar process for the F chord, jumping from the one chord to the four chord, instead of going from the one to the two to the three and then to the four. Why? Because the one four five are going to be the major chords constructed from a major scale, as can be seen from the lettering or the uppercase Greek numbers. And so we went to the F and now we're going to do a similar process going to the key or the chord of G. So we have that here. That's the one we're going to be working on the right hand side in this blank G cell. This is what we've constructed thus far, copying over from the OG tab and then hiding everything except the open positions, which I'm representing as the first three frets, remembering that the heavy string, the one closest to the ceiling when you're holding the guitar is going to be the top string. The way we're visualizing this, we then have our scale on the right hand side, which is still in the key of C. But now we're focusing in on the five chord that has been constructed, which is going to be a G major chord. So what we want to do this time is think about the interval. So in prior presentations, we mapped it out. We looked at the fingering of it. We've mapped it out on top of the pentatonic scale in the key of C, as well as the major scale in the key of C. Now we want to think about the intervals in more depth. Remembering this is often the area that confuses a lot of people because people get mixed up in what the terminology means when they're using different numbering systems. So I highly recommend doing this like in the morning before work possibly or something like that. When your mind is still working, spend 15 to half hour in the morning trying to differentiate and really understand what you're doing when you're holding down these chords. And then you'll plant the seeds so that when you're just strumming around, it'll start to solidify itself in the proper places, hopefully. First, a quick list of some of the numbering systems we need to keep straight and differentiated in our mind because when our mind mixes these things up, it leads to confusion. So first, we need some kind of system to name all the notes in the musical alphabet. We can use either letters or numbers to do that. We typically want a numbering system that's going to name the relative position within a scale of a particular note. And we could have a slightly different numbering system which still names the position of a note relative to a scale but gives us more information about the kind of chords that we can construct from that note. Will they be major, minor, diminished? We could have a numbering system helping us to name the notes in a chord, not in relation to the scale we're looking at, but rather in relation to the root note of the chord and its scale. And we could have a numbering system helping us to name the absolute intervals when looking at the notes in a particular chord in relation to the root of the chord. So let's give a little bit more detail on some of these items. Let's first go to the OG tab. If I go to the OG tab, we're working in the key of C, so I'm going to change this key over here to a 4 so we're looking at the key of C. This over here represents our musical alphabet. So we have our musical alphabet A and then A-sharp is being represented by a lowercase A and a B because we could name it either A-sharp or B-flat depending on which way we are going. We might get into that in more detail in the future, but just note that it's still, at this point, the same note tone-wise. So A-sharp, B-c-c-sharp, D-d-sharp, E, and then there's no sharp and then there's an F-sharp, G-sharp, and then it starts back over at A. Now remember, one of the benefits of this system is that, at least in the key of C, you can count the musical alphabet using our nice little song here at A-B-C-D and so on because there's no sharps or flats when we're looking at the key of C. But that gets more confusing when we're looking at other keys. It has its benefits because you can still construct any major or minor by using like every note in the alphabet, although there could be sharps and flats in it. So that's kind of neat, but it's still going to be a little bit difficult to try to count the musical alphabet forwards and backwards. If you try to sing the musical alphabet backwards from G, even if you didn't have sharps or flats and worrying about whether it should be a sharp or a flat, and go back to A, that's a lot more difficult than numbering where you can go forwards and backwards. So I think it's useful to memorize, since you're going to memorize a lot of stuff anyways, the absolute position of the names of the notes. So an A would be a 1, A-sharp would be 2, a B would be 3, C-4, C-sharp 5, D-6, D-sharp 7, E-8, F-9, F-sharp 10, G-11, and G-sharp 12, and then it starts back over as an A as a 1. By doing that, then you can easily count forwards and backwards, and you can start to count intervals using simple math. So I think that is really worthwhile to do. That's why over here, we have both the letter and the number so that we can see it both ways and get the benefits of using both of those kinds of systems to name the musical alphabet. So if I pull that, so notice when we construct our scale then, what we're doing is we're starting on a C, which I'm saying is an absolute position 4, and we're applying our formula, whole step, which is 2 notes, whole step, 2 notes, half step, 1 note, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. So if I apply that out, we start at a 4, which is a C, and then 4, 5, 6 to a D, see how the intervals work, 6, 7, 8, 8 is an E, 8, 9, half step is an F, 9, 10, 11, 11 is a G, 11, 12 goes around the horn back to 1, which is an A, there's only 12 notes in the musical alphabet, 1 plus 2, whole step gets us to 3, which is a B, and then 1 gets us back to the 4. So there's our musical alphabet, so that means if I apply that formula, that is how we create our notes in our scale. So we took the 12 notes, now we dropped it down to 7 using that formula. I'm not going to get into why we use that formula, that's just the formula. So I'm just going to accept that a priori now, and that's the formula. So now we've constructed our major scale based on that formula with these notes, and that's going to be our baseline worksheet. So then if I go back to the blank G tab over here, now given that we're looking at this numbering system and we're going to say, okay, what note are we focused in on? We're focused on the 5 note. So the 5 note is our point of focus, how can we construct a chord from the 5 note? Well, if I go over here and look at my chords in a circle, which I think is easier to do sometimes, and I start at a G, we just do the same thing we do every time, we just take every other note. So we skip the A and we go to the B and then we skip the C and we get to the D. That means we've constructed something from the C major scale starting at the 5 note, which is a G, B, and a D. However, when I name these kind of intervals in here, we usually call them a 1, 3, 5 of a G major. Now I know this is going to be a G major, one because I can see it over here in my cheat sheet, right? Because I put it as a capital or uppercase Roman numeral. That means that it's going to construct a major chord from it. But we constructed it the same way that we would construct this minor chord up here. We just took every other note in the scale that we're in. So how do I know it's major or minor? Well, one way is that the interval, the absolute interval, will have a two-hole step or a four-note-away interval, which we'll talk about that. So the intervals are what's giving us the differentiation. Notice that when I name the notes in relation to the chord, however, I'm not going to call it a 5, 7, 2. You could, you can see it that way because we constructed it from the C major scale. But I'm going to name the intervals a 1, 3, 5 because I'm naming it in relation to its major chord. So if I say that's a major chord, I'm going to name the notes from the intervals related to its major chord. So if I go back to the OG tab, for example, and I go up top and I say this is an 11, which is a G. Now I have my worksheet for a G instead of a C. The G is now the 1, which is also a major chord. If I was working from the G scale instead of the C scale, I still get a GBD. But I can see now in relation to the scale, it's the 1, 3, 5. See, it's the 1, 3, 5 of its related scale. GBD is the same GBD we get here. So when I'm looking at these notes up top, the chord scale, you know, like intervals within its related scale, I'm not looking at the scale I'm currently built it from. I'm thinking of it in terms of its related scale. But remember that I don't really need to flip my mind and know all the notes in the G major scale. What I need to know is the intervals. I can also map this out in my mind in terms of the intervals that create a major scale and a minor scale. And that's what these are going to be up top. These are going to be the intervals up top. Okay, so given that then, let's, when we map this out on our fretboard, we have our fretboard in open position, which I'm naming as from 0 to 3. The G is a classic open position shape because it utilizes many of the open strings here to ring it out in that position. We talked last time that there's different ways that you can basically finger this position. What I would practice now then is thinking about the intervals as we finger the position first using the worksheet and then trying to not use the worksheet as a crutch. So you could just kind of finger the position and think about what you're playing. So if I use my normal fingering of a G, which is the most common fingering, which looks like that of the G, I can start to say, first, let me just think about these intervals, the 1, 3, 5 of the related chord that we're working, which is a G. So if this is the 1, that's going to be a G. So I'm going to say, okay, that's a G. And then down one back one, you'll start to see if you looked at these other ones, the C and the F, which were also major, that's going to be the major third that is going to be back there. That's that position down one and back one will start to look familiar. And then this one is an open. So that one's open right here. So I've got the open D. That's the fifth I can see right here. That's the fifth and let's actually do another one. Let's do this copy and let's paste and let's make this one. Red not the inside of it. I want to make the outside red. So this one. So that's going to be the fifth. And then if I look at this one, that's an open string on back to an open G. That's the one. And then if I look at this one, I have once again another. It's repeating itself. I don't have anything but these three notes in it. That's going to be another three. That's a third. And then I have this one, which is going to be another G or one. So I can start to map that out when I'm looking at it and say, OK, this is a one. This is a major third. This is going to be a five. This is going to be the one again. And you can start to see those relative positions. And that helps you when you move it up or think about basically different things that you're going to be playing in relation to are they going to be major or minor and what are the notes within it. So I'm going to move this one up here. So then I would map it out a little bit more in depth. Once I do that and start to say, OK, let me think about this in terms of the intervals. So this one again is the one. So I'll actually say out loud. If you have the ability to say out loud, this is the relative position one because I'm saying it's relative position relative to the chord, not relative to the scale in this case, right? It's relative position one to the chord that we are in, which is a 11 note number 11, which is a G, right? And so then I'm going to go, OK, that one's straightforward because it's the one note. And then I'll go to this one and say, OK, this one that I'm playing is going to be, I would call it then a four note away major third. Now, remember, I have to say distinguish somehow, and I want to distinguish both with the number of intervals, as well as with my words, that it's a major third as opposed to a minor third because this third is the differentiating factor between a major and a minor chord. So I'm going to distinguish that in my mind by looking at the notes away, that it is the interval, absolute interval, not just the scale interval as well as the position relative to the scale. So let's give a quick recap. What does that mean? It's the third. So you can see, well, it's not the third right here of the C, right? It's the third if I went to the two, it's related scale. If it was then one, the third would be the B. But I don't need to think about it like that. I can think about it as though it's two whole steps or four notes away. I can think about it in terms of intervals. So let's pull out the trusty calculator here. And this is why numbering the notes is useful. So I'm going to say it's a four note away major third of note 11, which is a G, right? So if I use my math here, I'm going to say, well, 11 is a G plus four notes. That would get us to 15. There's only 12 notes in the musical alphabet, so I can say minus 12. And that gets us to three. Three is a B. So notice how that little bit of math can be useful. I can do it this way too. I could say 11 plus four is 15. Usually in my mind, if it's between 13 and 19, I'm just going to drop the one and subtract two because that's easier to do in my mind. So I'm just going to say, okay, that's like five, which would be minus 10. And now I just have five minus two. Five minus two is three. And that's going to be a B. And then this one over here, if I look at this note, that's the open note, which is a D. So that's a D. I can say, okay, I can see it's the fifth. Now, what does it mean that it's the fifth? Well, if I looked at the G major scale, it would be the fifth, a D of the G major scale. But I want to think about it in terms of intervals over here, absolute intervals, not intervals related to the scale. It's seven notes away. So I'm going to say this is a seven note away fifth of note 11 G. Now, when I say seven notes away note, I don't have to say that it's major or minor because whether this G be major or minor, the fifth will be seven notes away. Now, again, you got to keep that kind of straight in your mind because you're like, well, it's a fifth. That means it's the five note. Why are you saying it's a seven note away fifth? Because the five is relative to its scale, which only has seven notes in it out of the 12. And when I say it's seven notes away, it's absolute, meaning I can use my math and say, well, if I was on 11 before, 11 plus seven brings me up to 18, drop the one or minus 10 gets you to eight minus two gets us to the six, which is a D, or you say 11 plus seven minus 12 gets you to six, right? So it's a seven. So that way you can kind of easily do the math in your head. It takes, I mean, if you know these notes, you could do the math. It's not easy at first, but you could do it, right? So you can also count up this way. You can say, okay, well, if that was, what does it mean to be seven notes away? Sometimes it's useful to count this up on one string. So for example, if this is my one position, that's my G, and I count up seven frets, which are seven notes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, it gets me to there. That would be then my D. That's useful to know. And I could still use that when I'm playing. I can be doing this and then go up there and play that note. But if I'm trying to make a chord in open positions from zero to three frets, it's going to be difficult to hold that D down. So we're looking for the relative positions in this case underneath because the one is the string that we're holding out up top. And by looking at those relative positions, you'll be able to recognize what those patterns are when you start moving up the fretboard, for example. And if we see this one, let's go back to this one real quick. This was the third, which was the B. That relative position is really useful to be able to recognize. If this is your one, then your third is down one and back one unless you're in between these two strings where they have that weird kind of relationship. If I was to count up four frets because this was four notes away, I could also do it this way. If this is my G, one, two, three, four would get me to there, there's my B. That's useful to kind of see. But obviously I want to play it in open position. You can also kind of see the relation between these two strings by saying, well, that's the same note as this. So if I count this up, that's a B, one, two, three, four, five strings up this way and one up that way gets you to another B. So you can kind of see the pattern of the fretboard when you start to look at these intervals and mapping out what you're actually just playing. Just take a little bit of time to map it out. If I go then back here, this is a G. So this is an open position G here on this string. So I would just say that that's going to be relative position one of note 11 G, which is a note 11 G. This is an open B right here. So there's an open B. And I'd say that would be relative position here. I would say four note away major third of note 11, which is a G. I would just kind of repeat that in my mind. And then here, once again, we're back to the one. So I'd say, okay, and then this note is relative position one of note 11 G, which is, of course, note 11, which is a G. And then you can kind of switch up your fingerings and say, okay, well, what if I didn't hold that one down and I held this one down instead? That means that I wouldn't be ringing this out and I'm not going to ring this bottom string out at all. And I'm just going to hold this one down. And that means that down here I have another seven note away, a seven note away fifth of note 11, which is a G. So let's just go through all of these in this position now. By the way, you could hold this one down and this one, right? I could put these two fingers like that. Let's go through these and just count them a little bit faster this time. So if I get to the point, you can do this without the cheat sheet, right? So I'd say, okay, but I'll use the cheat sheet right now. So I say this is going to be the one relative position one of note 11 G, which is note 11 G, right? And then I'm going to go to this one and say, okay, this finger down one and back one is relative position four note away major third. I have to say it's major because that's the differentiating factor between major and minor of note 11, which is a G. And then I can do my math and say, okay, that means that 11 plus four is 15 minus 12 or drop it down to five minus 10 minus two, five minus two is three, which is three, which is a B, right? So I'm going to do a little math in my head to get down to the number of three and then say, well, three is a B and then I hope me to memorize that a three is a B. And then I can say, okay, if I go to the next one, this one is the D. So I'm going to say we're here now. This is relative position seven note away fifth, which I don't have to say major or minor because it wouldn't matter if the one was major or minor. Seven note away fifth of note 11, which is a G. And then I could say, well, note 11, 11 plus seven, not 11 plus five, 11 plus seven is 18, 18 minus 12 or drop it down to eight, which is minus 10, eight minus two is going to be, wait a second, eight minus two is going to be six. And that's going to be my D, which is a six and a six is a D. Right? So because I'm going to start to memorize the absolute notes. All right. And then I'm going to say, well, okay, now here's another one. Obviously another one right here when I'm looking at this note relative position relative position one of note 11 G is note 11 G. And then this one is going to be another third. Now this one isn't the third because I'm looking over here now. So now I'm holding this one down and I'm going to say, okay, now that's another seven note away. This is another seven note away fifth of note 11 G. I'm going to do my math and say, okay, 11 plus seven 18 or eight minus two minus 10 gives me eight minus two is six and six is a D. That's a D. And then I could do my last one here and this is going to be another G. So I could say, okay, that's going to be relative position one of note 11 G, which is note 11 G. So so you can look at all these different positions that we looked at last time. You can just hold down these two strings and you can see you have this one, this one and this one. And you can start to see that that's you know what that that makes the the chord because you have the one for the the one three five in there. And you can play just parts of the chord that way. And that also shows you why you can play this this bottom one like this or like this or like this or if you want to finger it this way. And you can you could see that you're still just playing all the notes that are in the key of G. Now we also said that because you're in the key of G and we're thinking about it as related to the C major that you could lift up any of your fingers here. Right. So I could do this. I mean, what if I did this and I lifted this finger up. Well now I'm revealing an A. So I'm going to say I'm going to reveal an A and say, okay, what am I actually doing there. This is going a little bit beyond what we're what I don't want to get too much into this. But if I reveal an A, if I can if I look at this chord that's been constructed from the key of C and a if I just repeated my my process. I started on a G. I took every other note to a B and then a D and then I keep on doing that I would get to the F and then I would get to the A. So the A we're saying is the ninth. Now this is where the numbering gets a little bit confusing here because you might say, well, wait a sec. I thought the one three five were numbering in relation to the G's relative scale. If I go to my G, there's the one three five. There is no nine because they don't there's only seven notes in the chord. So so this so how you get a nine, right? So because that a like if I looked at that if I looked at an A on its relative chord, it would be a two, not a nine. But but we usually but the so what we usually do is we skip every other note. So we don't we don't want to call it a two. We want to continue with our pattern of saying that we're starting here and kind of taking every other note. And so the next note, even though you end up with what would be like the two. If I looked at its relative scale and we call it a nine, right? But in any case, you can start to map that out. You could say, well, this is going to be a nine. Now notice that these notes up top are relative to this first are mapping out in relation to the C. So these intervals are not always going to be correct for everything else, right? Because I only mapped it out. We only mapped it out up top for the first chord that's constructed. And then we'll look at all the other chords and see how they differ, how the intervals will differ and try to try to recognize that. Now, when you look at the first three notes, the one, three, five, then the only note that's going to differ is the three. That's the differentiating factor between the majors, the one, four, five and the minors, the two, three and six. When you start to get to the sevens through the 13s, then it gets a little bit more weird because because like if I construct the seven note, then you'll note that the one and the four will have an interval that's going to be different than the five. So we'll start to have different differentiating intervals other than the one you need to know for sure, which is the major and minor when we start to add sevens, which is the next most important thing. And then you'll have other weird stuff that happens when you go to a nine and 11 and a 13. But you could start to map those out, same kind of concept in your mind and start to think, well, why is this seven different when I play it on the one, the four and the five? It's because the intervals are different. And so now I can determine which interval is different on which relative chord that's being constructed so that I can start to fit these things into what I'm playing. And so it basically makes sense. Also, when you move this up now, you can see these patterns move up. So when you when you see this pattern, if I was to move that up the fretboard and play it like on an A here, I'd have to switch my fingering, right? But then you could see, so I have my knees in a weird position, but you could see you have that or you could play it, you know, this way. And you could see that pattern one, three, five, one, three, five. So you'll start to see that pattern. And when you see that kind of A position, if I play like an A, this is a C right here. But I have these three notes, which people often think of as an A kind of position, although it's kind of in between between A and a G because an A bar chord would look like this. And the G, you know, is in between here. But you could say that's going to be if if I was to play it down here, this would be the one which in this case would be a C and the five is above it. So it would be a five, one major third. And you'll start to recognize those positions as we as you kind of move up the fretboard when we talk about that stuff later. Now also just remember that when you when you think about the entire scale, when we looked at the scale down here, the major scale, for example, we constructed the major scale around this from the key of C. And remember that we constructed this chord from the key of C. So this fits in the entire shape of the C major scale. And when you pick up any of these notes, what you're really doing is picking up the remaining notes within the C major scale. So you can do that. And that's that's when you're thinking of it more as the fifth, or you can switch your mind and say, I'm now going to be moving when I play this chord entirely, not only to the three notes that fit in the C major and the G major scale, but I'll switch entirely in my mind to the G major, which means it would be the one note. And so you'll still have the same notes in the chord, but you'll have different notes around it, right? And that's why you end up to having different notes when you're thinking about the 7, 9, 11, and 13th if you're thinking about it as the fifth note of a major scale as opposed to the one note of its own major scale. And so we'll so right now we're thinking about everything in terms of constructing it from the C major scale. Later on, hopefully we'll get to other scales and we'll get to a G scale because it's a great position to play on the guitar, very user-friendly to play on, so maybe we'll look at that later. But for right now, you just want to make sure that you have in your mind that as we map this out, these three notes will be in the G major and in the C major scale, but we're constructing it as though it's the fifth right now and therefore everything around it we're still seeing as being in the C major scale.