If you’re interested, get in touch (lessons ‘at’ villageguitarstudio.com) and we can go from there.  I’d be more than happy (and even excited) to read potential posts, talk about ideas, etc.

What Are Seventh Chords?

The main difference between seventh chords and major or minor barre chords or triads is that seventh chords are 4-note chords rather than 3-note chords. In other words, all seventh chords are made up of four different notes, while major and minor chords are made up of only three different notes. It’s because they contain four different notes that seventh chords sound a little more colorful than 3-note major or minor chords.

If you’re unfamiliar with how major and minor chords are built, you can learn about it in this triad guitar lesson that I published on the blog. The lesson will give you all the information you need to understand before getting to the building of seventh chords that we’re about to talk about.

How Seventh Chords Are Built

As you may be able to guess from the name, seventh chords have the seventh note of the major scale in them. In seventh chords, this seventh note is added to either a major chord (1, 3, 5) or a minor chord (1, b3, 5) to create the 4-note chord.

There are four main kinds of seventh chords. I’ve listed them here, along with the number formulas for their construction.

• Major 7 – 1,3,5,7
• 7 – 1,3,5,b7
• Minor 7 – 1, b3, 5, b7
• Minor 7b5 – 1, b3, b5, b7

It’s can be helpful to think of all chords, whether 3-note major/minor chords, or 4-note seventh chords, as falling into three general families. The Majorchord family includes Major chords as well as Major 7. The Minorfamily includes Minor chords as well as Minor 7 and Minor 7b5 chords. I’ll call the last family the Dominantfamily, and that family includes the 7 chord.

Playing Seventh Chords On The Guitar

Now that we’ve talked about the theory behind seventh chords, it’s time to learn to play them on the guitar. I’ve included two different ways to play each of the four main types of seventh chords: with the root note on the 6th string, and with the root note on the 5th string. I’ve written all 6th string seventh chords so that they start from the root note G and all 5th string seventh chords so that they start from the root note C.

The most common voicings for seventh chords with the root note on the 6th string.

The most common voicings for seventh chords with the root note on the 5th string.

How To Practice Seventh Chords

The first step in learning to use seventh chords is to memorize the eight chord voicings above. Once you’re comfortable with the voicings, the next step is to try and play a song that uses these types of chords. Here are the chords to a jazz standard type tunethat you can practice the chords with. Try to play through it using the new chords, at first slowly, and eventually in time with a metronome. Also, once you can play through it, try reversing the string that the root note of each chord is on. For example, if at first you played the A Minor 7 chord with the root on the 6th string, try playing it with the root on the 5th string.

I hope you found this lesson helpful! Good luck with the seventh chords and feel free to comment if you have any questions.

Thanks for reading!

About the Transcription
This is a solo guitar chord melody that he plays before the playing the melody again once the bass player comes in. There’s a four bar intro before the melody begins. Also, rather than resolving to the I chord, C, at the end of the melody, he plays another four bar intro to lead into the restatement of the melody with the bass player accompanying.

Up until what I labeled the ‘intro to head’, the chord melody is played rubato. I did the best I could with notating the rhythm. I’m fairly certain that all of the chord voicings are correct, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get the rhythms through listening to the recording of the song. Also, the names I chose to give to some of the chords are subjective, and I chose to use names that reflect the chord changes of the song. For example in measure 4 of both the A and the B section, I called that chord an F7 (9,#11) rather than an Eb major7#5.

Here are the links to the transcription:

Kenny Burrell – Chord Melody Intro to ‘Tenderly’ – Page 1
Kenny Burrell – Chord Melody Intro to ‘Tenderly’ – Page 2

Enjoy and please feel free to write or leave comments if you have any questions. Also, feel free to link to this transcription, or to my blog in general. And, finally, if you’re interested in guitar lessons in Chicago, please get in touch.

Thanks for taking a look!

I always cover this topic with students at my guitar lesson studio in Chicago and thought I’d write a music lesson about it. In this lesson, we’re going to learn to identify the key of a song by looking at it’s chords.

Major Key and the Major Scale

I’m going to cover major keys. Minor keys operate similarly and will be covered in a future lesson. One way to think of the idea of key is to understand that if a song or chord progression is in a major key, it means that the notes in the chords and melodies of the song come from that major scale.

So, if a song is in the key of G, the notes in the song are all from the G major scale. So, ‘key’ and ‘major scale’ are synonymous. There are exceptions to this and some songs that are in the key of G, for example, will have notes and chords that don’t come from the G major scale at all. This makes music interesting. But, for now, we’re going to concentrate on diatonic chord progressions, which are chord progressions that do not have any notes outside of the key that they are in.

Below is a a diagram of one octave of the G major scale. Notice that the notes are numbered 1-7, then the eighth note is numbered 1 again. This is because there are only seven different notes in the major scale. If we were to continue this scale from the second note labeled 1, we would be playing the same seven notes in a higher octave.

One octave of the G major scale

Now, we’re going to use the scale to find out what chords are in the key of G major. As I said above, a major scale has seven different notes. Each of these notes is also the root note of a chord. If you’re unfamiliar with what a root note is, it’s simply the note in a chord that gives the chord it’s name. Because there are seven notes and each one is the root note of a chord, there are seven different chords in a key. In our example of the key of G major, the notes of G major are G-A-B-C-D-E-F#, so there would be a G chord, an A chord, a B chord, etc. in the key of G.

Numbering Chords with Roman Numerals and Chord Qualities

When referring to the chord that starts on a particular note of the major scale, or key, you use the roman numeral of the number of the note within the scale. This is actually very simple. Since G is the first note of the G major scale, in the key of G the chord that has the note G for it’s root note is called the ‘I’ chord. The chord that starts on the note A in the key of G is called the ‘II’ chord, etc.

The chord qualities for each roman numeral are the same in every key. They are:

I – Major
II – Minor
III – Minor
IV – Major
V – Major
VI – Minor
VII – Diminished

Below is an example of a very common chord progression in the key of G. You would call this a ‘I-IV-V-IV’ chord progression. This is because the G chord starts on the 1st note of the scale, the C chord on the 4th note of the scale, and the D chord on the 5th note. Notice that the chords follow the chord qualities listed above.

I-IV-V-IV chord progression on the key of G

Here is an example of the same I-IV-V-IV chord progression, but in the key of D. Notice that the chords are different, because now they are from the D major scale.

I-IV-V-IV chord progression in the key of D

Here’s one final example. While the two examples above use only major chords, here’s an example in the key of G that uses the VI chord, which based on the chord qualities listed above, would be a minor chord.

I-V-VI-IV chord progression in G

How to Practice This

It’s important to develop the skill of being able to look at a chord progression and be able to identify it’s key. Here are a few ideas of how to practice this skill:

• Pick several keys and write out I-IV-V chord progression in each key. Play these on the guitar.
• Write chord progressions in different keys that include the minor chords. Play these on the guitar.
• Try to identify the key of songs. Also, label the chords with roman numerals.

While it may seem difficult at first, through doing these things over time, it will become easy for you to think of chord progressions and songs in terms of keys.

Also, here is a lesson I posted earlier on soloing with major and minor pentatonic scales. This lesson covers which pentatonic scales will work once you’ve identified the key of the song you want to solo over.

Thanks for reading the article and please feel free to leave comments or get in touch if you have any questions. Also, get in touch if you’re in the area and are interested in guitar lessons in Chicago.

But seriously, if you’re in the Chicago and interested in buying guitar lessons for someone, here is how it works: You can pay for any amount of lessons that you’d like to give as a gift. Here is where you can find information about the rates for guitar lessons at my studio. You can pay me in advance if you’d like, and I can give you a receipt (without the dollar amount) that you can give to the person who will be taking the lessons. Or, they could bring the payment for the guitar lessons the first time that we meet. Either way you’d like to do it is completely fine. To schedule the lessons, it’d probably be easiest to have the person contact me after you’ve told them about the gift so I can find a time slot that works for them.

If you’re interested in buying a gift certificate for guitar lessons, or have any questions about lessons, please feel free to contact me.

Happy Holidays!

Here are the links:

Wes Montgomery – ‘Stablemates’ guitar solo 1
Wes Montgomery – ‘Stablemates’ guitar solo 2

I did my best with the rhythms, but there’s a couple of measures in the second chorus where I got as close as I could, but had trouble notating the exact rhythms he played. Those are only two small parts, though. At least, I hope it’s only in those parts! Let me know if you’re able to correct any errors.

As with every Wes solo, there’s lots of cool stuff in here, so have fun!

If you’re in the area and are interested in guitar lessons in Chicago, please feel free to get in touch.

I’m using this blog to write and publish guitar lessons. So, if you’d like to learn some new guitar stuff, you’re in the right place! The lessons are going to be written for varying levels, from beginner to advanced, so the topics will jump around a bit. If there’s anything you’d like to see covered, or you have any questions about anything I’ve posted, please feel free to get in touch.

Thanks again for stopping by and have fun checking out my blog! If you happen to be in the area and are interested in guitar lessons in Chicago just send me an email. And, again, don’t hesitate to contact me with any comments, suggestions, or contributions.

Have fun and please check back often!

In this installment, we’re going to do basically the same exercise we did in lesson 2, but this time we are going to voice lead the arpeggios. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, voice leading refers to the distance that individual notes move when going from one chord to the next. When the individual notes of a chord move only a small distance to the notes of the next chord, it’s referred to as ’smooth voice leading.’ When I refer voice leading in this lesson, I really mean smooth voice leading.

Voice Leading with Arpeggios

Voice leading with the arpeggios we’ve covered is a lot simpler than it may sound. Here are the basic ‘rules’ for the exercise we’re going to do:

• On the first chord, start at the root note of the arpeggio, as we did before, and play up the arpeggio in eigth notes for the measure.
• At the beginning of the next measure’s chord, rather than jumping down to the root note of the new chord, you’re going to start on the note of the new chord’s arpeggio that is nearest to the last note you played of the previous chord’s arpeggio.
• You only switch directions (playing up or down) when you’ve come to the lowest or highest note in any chords arpeggio.

To make it a little more clear, let me show you an example of what I’m talking about. But, first, here is where you can find the song that we’re using for these arpeggio exercises.

Now, in the last lesson, the exercise I had you do over the chord progression of the song looked like this:

Starting on the root note of each arpeggio, as we did in the last exercise

And, here is what you would play over the first three chords of the progression in the new voice lead version of this exercise:

The arpeggios of the first three chords of the progression using smooth voice leading

Notice how in the second example, rather than jumping back to the root, you are starting the next chord on the closest note to where you ended the previous chord.

Practice doing this exercise over the song until you’re able to voice lead the arpeggios through the whole song, while playing with a metronome.

Tips for Doing this Exercise:

Hafe Fun!

This is a great exercise because it really works on your ability to not only see chord tones, but to quickly see how the notes of one chord move to the notes of the next. This is essential for any type of playing in which you want to play over each chord. I found this exercise to be very helpful for my playing, and hopefully you will too.

Once you’re able to do the exercise, don’t forget to then try using the arpeggios to improvise over the song. Do that regularly and try to make melodies, make connections between the chords, and make music with the arpeggios. It may take time, but eventually they’ll be a musical part of your playing and not just an exercise.

If you’re in the area and are interested in guitar lessons, check out the website for Village Guitar Studio, my guitar school in Chicago. Also, if you’ve just ended up on this page randomly, here is a link to the beginning of my guitar blog.

If you have any questions about the lesson, feel free to leave a comment, or contact me.

The Importance of Rhythm

Whether music is being played by one person playing guitar alone, or a whole band playing together, it is played to a ‘pulse’. The pulse is a steady beat that underlies the music and is felt by the musician or musicians playing it. When you are listening to music, you may find yourself tapping your foot to it. When you do that, it’s the pulse of the piece that you’re tapping with your foot. Playing to a steady pulse is what makes the music sound ‘together.’ Without this underlying pulse, the music would sound like a random collection of chords and notes, rather than a song. While feeling the pulse is important in a band because it allows everyone to be playing together, it’s equally important that music being played by one person has a pulse.

One other term to be aware of is ‘beat.’ While sometimes the word beat is used interchangeably with pulse, like when people refer to ‘the beat of the song,’ we will use it here to mean one individual unit of the pulse. When you are tapping your foot to a piece of music, each single foot tap is a beat.

What Does a Metronome Do?

The function of a metronome is simply to provide a pulse with which you can practice. When you turn on the metronome it will make a steady clicking sound that will be the pulse and you are able to vary the speed. The idea is that through practicing with the metronome, you will eventually begin to feel a pulse internally when you are playing music.

Here’s How to Practice with a Metronome

We’re going to go through a simple exercise that can help you start practicing with the metronome. But, first, there’s just one more term to talk about. A ‘measure’ is a unit that music is divided into. In most music a measure has 4 beats. This means that if you were tapping you foot to music and counting ‘1-2-3-4,’ each time you started on 1 again, you’d be in a new measure.

What you will be working on in this exercise is playing a simple song to the pulse provided by the metronome. Let’s say the first four chords of the song are G – D – E minor – C, with each of the chords lasting for one measure, or four beats. To get started, turn on the metronome at a slow speed (50-60) and start counting along with the metronome, 1-2-3-4. Now, try to play each chord of the song on beat 1 of each measure. And, if it still takes you some time to switch from chord to chord, you can use beats 2-4 of each measure to get to the next chord in time for beat 1.

So, in the example above, you’d play the G chord on beat 1, and start switching to the D chord on beats 2-4. Then, play the D chord on beat 1 of the next measure, etc. You should do this until you can play the entire song comfortably with the metronome in this way. This exercise is great because it will allow you to start feeling what it feels like to play in time, but you’ll still have time to switch from chord to chord.

Once you are able to play through the whole song playing each chord on beat 1, you could try strumming the chord on beats 1 and 2. This will give you less time to switch, as you will only have beats 3 and 4 to get to the next chord. But, after doing the first part of the exercise, with some practice you should be able to get this. Then, you can work on playing each chord on beats 1, 2, and 3. Finally, once you have that, you work on playing each chord on each beat of its measure while still being able to switch to the next chord in time for beat 1 of the next measure.

If you are just a beginner at guitar lessons, or haven’t practiced with a metronome before, going through all parts of the exercise will take some time. Just be patient and keep working on it! To students I teach guitar lessons to, I recommend taking a week for each segment of the exercise. Though this would take a whole month to complete, it will be a great introduction to working with the metronome and will already start to firmly establish the idea of playing in time.

I hope you enjoyed the lesson, and as always, feel free to leave comments or get in touch if you have any questions.

If you’re in the area, I teach beginner guitar lessons in Chicago at Village Guitar Studio, my private lesson studio. If you’re interested, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s a quick post that I’ve been meaning to make for a while. If anyone has any suggestions for topics of guitar lessons that they’d like me to write about on the blog, please feel free to send me a message or leave a comment. I’d love to write and publish some lessons about specific topics that people are interested it. Just let me know! Though I probably can’t do EVERY topic that gets suggested, I’m happy to do the ones that I think I’d be able to do well and would be of common interest.

Don’t worry about the skill level of the topic or topics that you suggest. I want to have lessons on my blog for total beginners, as well as more advanced players. So, unless it’s something that I don’t know about and is over MY head, then I’m happy to write about anything that anyone would like to see here.

Also, if you’re in the area, and are interested in guitar lessons at Village Guitar Studio, my guitar school in Chicago, feel free to contact me. Feel free to contact me through that link with any suggestions for the guitar lessons on the blog as well.

Cool!