Where are you up to with your guitar playing skills? Have you reached that point where those seven songs you can play quite well just aren't satisfying enough anymore? Would you like some inspiration from someone who has being playing acoustic guitar for the last sixteen years and knows a thing or two about the subject?

Your host Clive (that's me) would be delighted to help you progress to the next level and beyond. Perhaps you've reached the point of having to conquer the dreaded bar chord. Or maybe you're way beyond bar chords and it's the mention of major sevenths and the all important perfect forths and fifths that has you perplexed.

From absolute beginners to intermediate ability I has a lesson plan to suit you, especially if like me you're an aspiring song writer. Don't you just envy those professional musicians who can listen to a new song or an old one for that matter and quite happily work out the guitar chords for it right there and then? I can show how to do that - it's not rocket science, it's a little tiny bit of maths - you need to be able to count up to 13! - and some chord progression theory. In no time at all I can have you analysing melody lines and pulling the appropriate chords out them as if by magic.

Here's a list of classic songs that I'm sure you'd love to be able to play with confidence:

• The Long and Winding Road - Beatles - Easyish if you can play bar chords.
• Tracks of My Tears - Smokey Robinson - Moderately difficult.
• Yesterday - Beatles - Quite difficult but worth the effort.
• Sapore Di Sale - Gino - Easyish - The Italian lyrics could be a challenge though!
• Blackbird - Paul McCartney - Picked - Easy peasy with a bit of practice.
• The Tower - Chris de Burgh - Easy.
• Puff The Magic Dragon - Seriously, some people just want to be able to play the 3 chords of Puff!
• Song Sung Blue - Neil Diamond - Easy peasy.
• Here Comes The Sun - George Harrison - Easy.
• Have I Told You Lately - Van Morisson - Easyish.
• Transmission Ends - Chris De Burgh - Not difficult and sounds great on the guitar.
• Love Is Like A Butterfly - Dolly Parton - Easyish. Rythm is everything!
• When A Man Loves A Woman - Calvin Lewis - Easy peasy.
• Hello Goodbye and Hey Jude - Beatles - Easy peasy.
• Anything from 'The Source' - Graham Kendrick always throws some fabulous chords into his songs.
• Girl From Ipanema - Astrud Gilberto - Quite difficult but I have a fabulous arrangement for guitar.
• Moon River - Mancini - Audrey Hepburn - Definitely worth the tricky bits.
• La Bamba - Ritchie Valens (1958) - Easy.
• These Boots - Nancy Sinatra - Easyish.
• Rainy Days - The Carpenters - Fabulous song and really not too difficult. Practice makes perfect!
• Hotel California - The Eagles - Easyish.
• This list could go on for ever you know...

All print outs - song sheet, guitar tabs, chord progression charts etc - are provided free of charge. If you can bring your own guitar then that's fine if not then I have one that you can play. Where do the lessons take place? On the sun terrace of course, with a glass of Montepulciano on hand to help with those flashes of creative genius!

Is there any guarantee that Clive can in fact play the guitar? A reasonable question. Have a listen to the following samples, a collection of snippets including, 'Never Be The Same', 'Girl From Ipenima', 'Blackbird' and 'Wild Mountain Thyme'.

    Snippets

If you would like to make a CD of yourself playing and singing we can do that too - I have a digital recording studio all ready and waiting. If you're a keyboard player then I also a have a lovely digital piano with weighted keys - very important!

Perhaps you've had a look at my 'Wild Mountain Thyme' video - it was my first attempt at making a video for YouTube. I thought it might be a way of promoting the region of Abruzzo and so one day I set off with my guitar, a camera and a tripod and starting singing - to the local sheep. It's actually quite difficult to make a video by yourself; I aim to have another try at a different song this summer.

If you have an idea for a song that you would like to play and record as a video whilst you're out here at MonteViste then by all means we can do that too.

These lessons are not in any way heavy the most important thing is to learn something new while at the same time enjoying the music. That said, one of the most useful skills to have is that of being able to listen to a new (or old) song and be able to work out the chords to it. By means of a bit of music theory and some magic chord progression charts (Chase Sheets) I can teach you just that skill. The other aspect of this all important skill is the ability to exchange the same-old, same-old chords that you've been using for years for related but far more interesting ones.

Subjects that can be covered regarding song writing and chord analysis are:

• The melodic scale compared to the harmonic scale.
• The circle of fiths and what you can do with it.
• How to draw a chord progression chart.
• What the relative minor key is and why we need to know.
• The Tonic chord and its Leading notes and why they're so important.
• Transposition to suit your vocal range.
• The most beautiful sounding chord in the universe - the major seventh.
• Why the perfect fifth is so perfect and how to use it.
• Secondary dominants and what to do with them.
• How to modulate between keys.
• The blues scale, why it's blue and how to play it.
• Tritones, their inherant dissonance and why that matters.
• Codas - Two below, one below, root - et al.
• Crafting your songs and your recordings.

An Example Decompostition

In 2006 a rather excellent film was made about the British painter and author Beatrix Potter. The film features a song written by Nigel Westlake and Mike Batt and sung by Katie Melua called 'When You Taught Me How To Dance'. It's a lovely gentle piece which is ideally suited to a voice and a guitar; after listening to the song a few times I set about working out the chords to it. I started by picking up my guitar and trying to find notes that fitted into the melody line. Within a minute or so it was obvious that the song was being played in A major, there is however a rogue G in the melody but we'll come back to that presently.

So the song is being played in A major, why not simply say that the song 'is' in A major? Because one of the most important points to realise about music is that any given piece can be transposed and then played in any desired key. A major just happens to suit Katie's vocal range, and mine too as it happens.

After working out what key the song was being played in, arriving at the associated chords was simply a matter of applying a little music theory. We know for example that in the key of A major the scale follows the standard Diatonic, major scale pattern T,T,S,T,T,T,S where 'T' stands for 'Tone' and 'S' stands for 'Semitone'. This gives us the following notes for the scale of A major: (A), B, C#, D, E, F#, G# and back to A. Also from music theory, from the Harmonic Scale, we know that the chords associated with the scale of A major are:

 

• A Major (A) ( I )
• B Minor (Bm) ( IIm )
• C# Minor (C#m) ( IIIm )
• D Major (D) ( IV )
• E Major (E) ( V )
• F# Minor (F#m) ( VIm )
• G# Diminished (G#Dim) ( VII° )

 

Just to remind ourselves the Harmonic Scale is written like this:

I, IIm, IIIm, IV, V, VIm, VII° or else I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, VII°

If you play this on your guitar it will be just like playing a scale but using chords. Interestingly though the final diminished seventh chord can be replaced with the seventh of the fifth, like this:

I, IIm, IIIm, IV, V, VIm, V7

Don't ask me why it works just enjoy the fact that it does (hint - dominant seventh). One of the advantages of playing the V7 in place of the Diminished Seventh is that the fingering of diminished chords on the guitar is invariably very difficult - anything for an easier life!

Back to the song... Knowing the root key and therefore the chords we have to choose from, is half the battle, it's then just a case of associating the right chord with the right word in the song and simultaneously working out the rhythm and the points at which the chords naturally change. This is the first verse from the song complete with the chords written above the words:

This is what it sounds like when played with 'block' chords'; a block chord is simply a full chord played as a single strum just so you can hear the sound and judge whether it seems correct or not in relation to the melody line.

    When You Taught Me How To Dance - Block chords 

 

But hang on a minute I'm saying that the song is in A major and yet for the word beguile I'm playing C not C# minor - why is that? Surely the C major chord doesn't exist in the key of A major - what gives? Hmmm, this is a bit tricky and is best explained with a diagram - a chord progression chart based on the Harmonic Scale also known as a 'Chase Chart'.

You'll have noticed that the progression (series of chords) shown in the diagram to the right is slightly different than the standard version on the left, in fact it has been optimised. Both are based on intervals of five semitones (three notes) between chords, the major triads are grouped on the right, the two most important minor chords are are grouped at the upper left, the minor third has been changed to the seventh of the major third the fifth has been changed to the seventh of the fifth (dominant seventh) and finally, in both diagrams, the diminshed seventh rests at the bottom of the diagram.

The chord played for the word beguile pops out of the key of A major and moves to the chromatic chord C major. Why is it referred to as a chromatic chord? Because only one of its notes ('e') is in the key of A major - our starting key for the whole song. The notes that make up the C major triad are C, E and G but as we've already seen the notes that make up the scale of A major are (A), B, C#, D, E, F#, G# and then back to A - C and G don't enter into the scale of A major. Nonetheless, playing C major fits perfectly - why? In effect the writers of the song have chosen to skip out of the root key of the song - just for a moment - and then back into it again. In so doing they've created a melodic accidental and at the same time a more interesting arrangement; - the word beguile is sung to the note of G not G# and G is in the chord C major - not C# minor.

The chase chart shows us the passages between the chords and clearly reveals those chords that are chromatic. The chase chart doesn't give us any information about rythm or melody just the chords and how they interrelate. If a song is at all complicated then it's often easier to see what's going on by splitting the song into verse, chorus, refrain etc, and then drawing a seperate chase chart for each section. This is a set of chase charts for, 'When You Taught Me How to Dance':

Just some points about the chase charts above:

• The chord references are always written inside the circle using Roman numerals.
• Start from the root position and go clockwise counting up 3 notes at a time but making sure to note appropriate sharp or flat versions of chords.
• The chords around the outside can take on any variation e.g. Fb2, A11, Em7, C#m.
• You can use any variation of chord in any position including the minor ones - a chord's type can change, the chord's letter cannot.

 

From the middle chase chart we can clearly see the point in which the harmonic scale deviates from A major skipping out to play the chromatic C major chord for one bar before returning once more to the original progression. We can also see from the chase chart that the the refrain for the song departs from the major triads a little introducing F#m. Here is the whole song with the chords that I arrived at by applying the techniques outlined above.

This is my version of the song as recorded here at MonteViste; Katie Melua doesn't strum the chords she picks them which is also what I've chosen to do with my version. I've also added a couple of slight variations to the final refrain; I've substituted the chromatic C major chord with the chromatic G major chord. Remember that the word 'beguile' is sung to the note 'g' (scale degree six). Either C or G can be played here but in playing the G chord, as I pass to the following D, I can 'pull-off' with my little finger (from g to the f# of the D major chord). Also, at the very end of the song instead of landing firmly on the tonic chord A major I've switched to a 'coda'. So from the E major of the word 'to' I play FM7 followed by G6 going up the fretboard and then finally back down to finish on AM7

As is my want sometimes I've changed the words slightly, instead of, 'years ago' I sing, 'long ago'. I did so without thinking about it really; I think my mind simply came up with 'long ago' because there is thereby a natural link with the idea of 'longing'. I've also substituted, 'surprise' with, 'delight', I wasn't aware of having done that until after I'd recorded the lyric but decided to leave it as is...

    When You Taught Me How To Dance

Recording Your Music

Once a song's chords have finally been derived such that we can play it on a the guitar, it's time to record it. The whole subject of home computer based audio recording is a bit of a minefield but fear not I can teach you exactly what you need, why you need it and how to use it. From basic mixing-desk skills, including the all important application of reverb and equalisation, to the use of the audio recording software.

At the moment I'm working on one of my own compositions called 'Reflective Illusions' written in the key 'D' major. It's written in 'D' but I play in E using a capo on the second fret. Why? For two reasons, a) by now the frets are worn on my ten year old Ovation and so it can suffer with a little fret buzz and b) as you move up the finger board the frets are progressively closer together, this means that I can far more easily reach that 'accidental' top 'A' note with my little finger - it's a bit of a stretch when playing it in 'D' especially from the CM7+2 chord that occurs throughout the piece.

Why not just play it in 'E' without the capo? Because I love the sound of the open D2 and the way it bridges to CM7 and then down to Em. That is an important point as regards music theory by the way; always remember that pitch is relative and that there are many scales and many different tunings to choose from, certainly as far as the guitar is concerned. This means for example that it would be a straight forward exercise to detune the guitar's six strings each by one full tone (playing the chord 'D major' would then result in 'hearing' 'C major') and then using the capo on the second fret to lift the guitar back to playing 'D' major and 'hearing' 'D major'. Think about it....

Here is an excerpt from 'Illusions', I've added the 'reflective' echo using an effects processor. It's a work in progress - I still haven't decided where I'm going with it or whether it is in fact worth pursuing. The chords played are D, D2, Dsus4, CM7, Em, D5add4, C9, D11/E, Em/G, F#m/A and G/E (7th fret). Perhaps you would like to let me know what you think off it.

    Reflective Illusions

The style is a little reminiscent of Glassworks by Philip Glass which basically consists of three parts of triplets repeating over and over again in a round - to some people it's just noise but to others, me included, it's fabulous and intoxicating. In 'Reflections' that rogue top 'A' note is a perfect fifth above the tonic 'D'. It's the furthest point away from the scale and that's why it stands out so much. The funny thing about this piece is that I never actually play it the same way twice but then that's one of the fantastic aspects of the guitar - no need to worry about the dots just think about the chords!

Call To Action!

If you've read this far then you must be interested in the guitar and music theory at least from the point of

view of wanting to play your favourite songs on your guitar and hopefully writing your own. So then;

        Don't Delay - Book Today!       Come and stay with us at MonteViste and let's play some guitar...