Some Definitions

Friday, May 30 2008 @ 10:06 AM UTC

To avoid some confusion for beginner musicians, let's clear up a few things:

• The Major Scale is all important, but you don't necessarily have to spend hours practicing it, because that's just boring
• When someone uses the term "fourth" or "fifth" or "third", these terms do not refer to any kind of fraction. They are referring to the first, second, third, fourth, fifth etc... steps of the major scale
• A major third is the third note of a major scale.
• A minor third is the third note of a minor scale, which is the major third flattened
• Flat means down by one semitone (or fret) - The symbol is similar to "b"
• Sharp means up by one semitone (or one fret) - The symbol is similar to "#"
• A major seventh chord is simply a major chord (1st, 3rd and 5th) with the seventh note included, so simply play the following notes of your major scale together: 1, 3, 5, 7
• In guitar chord notation, C means play a C major chord. Cm means play a C minor chord. C/G means play a C major chord, but use a G as the lowest note.
• Tempo is the speed of a song, normally define in BPM - beats per minute
• Common time = 4/4 = 4 beats per bar. 3/4 = a waltz. The first number means the number of beats per bar. The second number is the length of the note compared to a semibreve
• A semibreve is one whole bar in common time. A breve would be two whole bars. Two whole bars could well be a sensible definition of a phrase, but this is not by any means strict or necessary or actually defined anywhere else as far as I know.
• There are seven musical modes, also called "church modes", but that are named after ancient Greek regions or tribes. There is an excellent wikipedia article on this subject
• Each mode can be figured out and played using a particular major scale as demonstrated in the interactive circle of fifths
• To be continued.....

http://www.theguitarmaster.co.uk/article.php/some-definitions