Hey you! Go for it!
At the risk of offending people here who can actually read music I'll say this. You don't have to know how to read music to learn to play. You should have some knowledge of the basic scale and which chords go together in order to play a simple song. As someone else said, learn 3 chords and you can play a lot of stuff.
check this out. Below is a list of "chords" A chord, B chord, C chord etc....
A B C D E F G (There is no H chord, or H note in music,,so dont think past G)
Now, I'll assign numbers to each chord...the corresponding number is above each chord.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
A B C D E F G
Note; So, A=1,,,,B=2 etc. etc.
The 3 chords that go together to play a simple song are always going to be 1, 4, and 5, no matter what key you're playing in...or in this case, since A=1 it's A, D and E......So, you're playing this song in the key of A. So A equals the number 1.
Now, lets say you wanted to play the same song in the key of G instead of the key of A. Just make G number one chord and list the rest of the chords in numerical order after the letter G,,
G becomes the number 1, and since there is no "H" chord in music, for the next chord you'd go back to the beginning of the scale. So A would come next after G.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
G A B C D E F
G chord becomes the numer one chord.....
Remember; the three numbers you need to play the basic song are 1, 4 and 5 right?
So to play the song in G chord, you'll need numbers 1, 4, and 5,,,,,or G, C, and D...
Here's the cool part of all this, no matter what key you want to play the song, just make your main, or first chord equal the number one, then list the next letter of the alphabet next as your number 2 chord and so on.
Here's the same thing if I wanted to play the same song in "E" chord...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
E F G A B C D
So, the three chords I'd need to play the song are 1, 4, 5,,,, or in this case, E,,,A,,,and B...
You can do the same thing for any key.
Sometimes you'll try to sing along with your guitar, only to find that the key you're playing in is just to high or low for your voice to sing best. So, that's when you have to change KEYS, or chords.
That's why you need to know this number system. When you change keys, you change which 3 chords you need to play the song.
Note; the numbers never change, only the chords under the numbers.
Try fooling around with this, let me know if you don't understand it and I'll try to explain further.
Even studio musicians use this number system to see a "Chord Chart" of a particular song.
Like; In 2/4 time: Each measure of music equals two beats. You'd count, "ONE TWO, ONE TWO" etc.
1114 1151
Each number represents a chord, strummed each time as you count the first beat of a measure of time in the song. Every time you count ONE, you strum that chord,or number depending on what key you're playing in.
So, 1114 from above actually means that on ONE of every measure, you play the choresponding chord.
1 1 1 4
ONE TWO ONE TWO ONE TWO ONE TWO
That might be more than you want to learn right now, but just work on the number/chord system to you can choose any key you want and automacilly know which 3 chords to use to play your simple song.
Joe
Author
Topic: I want to play guitar (Read 17186 times)