Fingerstyle Minor Chord Scale Relations (Folk Guitar Lesson FO-106) How to play

Guitar Lesson #6 in the Folk Fingerstyle Module for intermediate players looks at the relationships between the open minor chords Am, Dm and Em and the C Major Scale. Very useful stuff if you wanna get into chord melody playing...

Whole series will be on the web site and a DVD is available with some bonus material! See the web site for more details!

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

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To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

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Have fun :)

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Hi, how'ya doing, Justin here!

Welcome to
Minor Chord Scale Relations!

And in this lesson we're going to be
looking at the relationship of the

C maj scale to the chords A min, E min
and D min; which are the 3 chords

in the key of C. We're gonna look at it
exactly the same way as we looked at

the major chords in the C Major scale,

So, let's get to a close-up and
check out how to do this.

So, just very quickly, we're gonna revise
the C major scale, so we have this:

G, F, E, D, C, B, A, G, F, E, D,
C, B, A, G, F and E.

♪

So, the chords that we're
looking at today: the 1st one is Am (♪)

And now we're looking at how to play
that scale kind of based around

our Am chord. So we have here: G (♪)
- just with the little finger, nice, easy one (♪)

to get the F note, our 1st finger
has to just lay over (♪)

and then back to normal for our E note.

♪

On the 2nd string, little finger
just goes down on the 3rd fret

to get our D note, lifts off to regular
for our C note and 1st finger lifts off

to get the note B (♪). Next string: we just
play the regular note for A, lift it off for G.

♪

Now, we don't tend to use
these other ones as much, but we've

also got F, E, D. We can't really play
the C there, because it interrupts with

the A root note, so: ♪
That's generally all of the ones we play.

We don't tend to play those: ♪
Well, that's worth knowing to...

you might wanna do a little run-down like
that sometime: ♪. It sounds kind of funky.

♪

Just explore it. Just like I'm doing now:

♪

And see the way that the scale and the
Am chord kinda lock together.

So, the 2nd chord that we're looking at
today is E minor: (♪). Now, generally, for this

particular one you wanna be using be your
2nd and 3rd fingers, but there's

other options, as you know with the
E minor chord, you can play it with any

2, kinda consecutive fingers and you're
gonna be fine. But because our melody:

♪

is here, it makes sense to use the
middle two fingers. So, of course,

little finger, 1st finger, open,
little finger, 1st finger, open,

little finger on the A, open,
little finger, if you're gonna go this far

on the F, E, lift it off for D, put it
back on for C, lift it off for B, open.

♪

Don't tend to: (♪)
Although of course: (♪)

just like the A minor:

♪

Just have a bit of an experiment.
That's all I'm asking you to do,

is to play around with the relationship (♪)
between this scale and the chord of Em

Now, there's one more minor chord
to look at, it's the D minor

Now, D minor in open position with the
C major scale's a little bit awkward,

because it's only using the thinnest
4 strings, anyway. So, we can get (♪)

We've got that much.

♪

But we don't tend to use...'cos it uses...
Has to require some kind of pretty weird

stretching things to get there.
So, generally, you'd wanna do

D min using your 1st, 2nd and 3rd fingers,
little finger down for the note G, off for F,

1st finger off to get to the E.
On the 2nd string: we've already got

the note D, 1st finger on the C,
open for the B.

♪

And then, we've got that:

♪

I'll be honest, I tend to avoid this chord
because there's no...

♪

Unless I'm just doing those kind of simple

♪

There's, you know, there's different ways
of playing the melodies there, but

♪

there's not that many as there are for
the other chords.

There we have the chord-scale relationships
between the C major scale,

our Am, Em and Dmin chords. Like I've
mentioned before, really what I want you

to do, is just experiment a little bit.
See the way that the scale

fits with the chord shapes.
That's really important to be

able to understand this idea; there's a lot of,
lot of ground that this covers.

When you understand the relationship
between the chords and the scales and

the way you can put it together, you get
all sorts of interesting chords, you get

the ability to play melody, there's all
sorts of things that this kinda leads to.

We're gonna be exploring some of that.
But this is one of those lessons that

for the future of your guitar playing is
gonna really make a difference. Even if

it doesn't seem to be right now. This is a
biggin. There's a lot of interesting stuff

going on here, so do spend a bit of time
with it and I'm sure you'll gonna enjoy

the next lesson, where we're
going to learn how to put all of these

major and minor chord scale relationships
along with our folk fingerstyle patterns,

to play the Australien classic song:
Waltzing Matilda.

And I'll see you for that very soon.
Take care of yourselves, bye-bye!