Chord theory

RobertW,

Thanks, that should take me a day or two to memorize.

That is interesting, I took Music Theory in college (back in 1974) but never learned what a sus chord was. I would see it in music and just play the chord and think that "sus" meant you are to let it "sustain"- not dampen it. Now I know. Good to add to my knowledge bank. And TonyKgull, in the US a cord of wood is spelled "cord" (spelling police), in Canada is it spelled "chord" of wood? (Curiosity, not smart aleck - it could be different.)

Back in the mid-90s, I wrote a paper during the few months off from college after graduating my Bachelor's degree and starting my Masters. The paper was for my own sue as a way of getting music theory on the fretboard, straight in my own head. Then, a guys posted in one of the usenet groups I was a part of at the time, wanting to put up one of the first guitar educational sites with free material, asking for submissions for the site. I sent him my paper, all done in ASCII since there wasn't a solid standard format yet for word processors.

Another guy, asked if he could reformat it for the Lick By Neck site, and he did a nice job. Here is the link:

www.lickbyneck.com/Lesson-CHORDMELODYGUITAR-AnOrganizedApproach-FormattedByColinSobers.htm

I think you can still probably find it for download at other sites around the internet.


I start with a logical approach to the music theory a person really needs, rather than the intellectual flights of fancy that have no bearing in real life on the bandstand. I start with the chromatic scale as the set of all notes used in Western music (not just country western...), then extract the major scale, and then how chords are built from the major scale. I provide daily exercises to internalize the information on the guitar fretboard, some other related bits of information, and a complete bibliography of where I obtained my material.

Not everybody is interested in delving this far into the craft of playing guitar, but for those who are, here it is for free. To my knowledge, it has always been free and always will be. Other than misspelling "exercise", nobody has yet told me of errors in the paper, and it has been studied by many people as individuals and in study groups over the years, both in North America (i.e. US and Canada) and in Europe. The guy who started and owns the Lick By Neck site told me that this paper got him going with chord melody and the arrangements he presents on that site, which are also free.

Tony

WOW, that's a lot of info!!!  I may attempt to digest that someday.

Much of the vintage Yamaha stuff I've written for my forum and website was written for myself.  How else would I remember how to do a neck reset on a vintage Yamaha??  Everyone I do I made little corrections, additions, improvements.  The same goes for many of the other articles.

Today I started writing an article on Vintage Yamaha vs. Modern Scale Length Compensation.  It started with the scale length error on the YamaGull, then a curiosity of how they came up with the saddle arrangement on the Yamaha's, and finally I did a CAD layout to show the relationship between the vintage Yamaha saddle and the modern compensated saddle.  I'm doing it to satisfy my own curiosity, but I might as well share it!

Everything I've posted is in my forum.  yamahavintagefg.boards.net/  And there's more I haven't finished.  It would be great to get the opinion of someone who's got far more experience than me.

The AGF is SO FULL OF BS!!! You get many people spewing the same answer to a question like they just want to hear themselves talk! And they keep recirculating the same rumors and inaccurate untruths. So many people think vintage Yamaha neck are attached with epoxy. Just because someone couldn't get the neck off, it's epoxied. I've taken 10 off. Only hide glue! A couple of weeks ago I called somebody out for spewing the same epoxy BS. I can't send them to my forum because the AGF doesn't allow links or mentioning "competing" forums. I got banned for 3 months last year for pushing that rule, hinting I have a forum and they could find it with Google. So I don't go there much.