A lot of a guitar players fear about music theory lies in the term itself "Music Theory." Those two words will often start to invoke mild terror in the body of many a guitar player. 

In fact, most guitar players out there refer to music theory as being confusing and too complicated to learn, so they push it away for another day.But, that ends up turning into months and years of neglect for this subject.

Good news, it doesn't need to be like that. Regardless of why you haven't studied theory, the fear of music theory is not about the challenge of learning it. 

The fear is often based more on because the student does not have a comfortable path to learning music theory in the first place.

A NEW WAY TO PLAY:
Do you just grab your guitar and play notes, or licks, or chords without ever thinking about even the slightest bit of theory with respect as to what it is that you’re actually playing? 

I know that I used to do that many years ago! And, I know from teaching experience that far too many Beginner and Intermediate guitar players will also do that. 

But, what if you could learn a simple idea that would give you a ton of information about what it is you’re playing? And, at the same time, what if that idea was so easy to understand that anybody could do it.

I know you’re probably curious as to what this idea is, so here’s the thing. All this has to do with is simply learning the order of the notes used in whatever it is that you’re playing. 

This is amazing to know how to do, because it will tell you; the name of the scale, the key that you’re in, and the Major or Minor harmony of what it is that you’re playing. 

So, let’s spend the next 8 – 10 min. learning exactly how this works, so that you can do this before the next time that you play anything on the guitar.

A lot of guitar players would easily learn how to play this 3-chord riff, but they’d never know the chord names, or the key that it’s in. And, that’s a real shame, because learning this information is really easy to do. 

Let me show you the method of how you could learn this using those chords that I just jammed on…

Example 2): Get the note names together
If you know the notes on your guitar neck, this first step will be super-fast to get through, (but even if you don’t, there’s a great website for getting your notes together on guitar, just go to, “GuitarScientist.com/generator.” 

That website will show you all the notes and allow you to trace out (and diagram), everything that you’re playing.

Let’s begin with the first chord of our jam. 

It looks like this…

What we’re after is to view those notes in 3rd’s so that they travel in a sequence that gives us notes in a 3-step order. 

All you need is a few seconds to figure that out with these notes, and when we do it, we end up with a 3rd’s order of; “G, B, D.” Telling us that we have a “G” chord! (Major) 

Example 3): Get the next chords note names together…
Now, let’s do that again, but with the next chord, in the progression. 

The next chord in the progression looks like this:

On the fingerboard the notes lay out as follows...

 That chord has three notes and they can be seen as; 

Again, we want to have those notes established in a direct order of 3rd’s so that they travel in a sequence that gives us the letter name distance over the notes in a 3-step order. 

All you need is a few seconds to accomplish that, and when we do it, we end up with a 3rd’s order of; “C, E, G.” Telling us that we have a “C” chord! 

You can see how easy it is to do the ordering, and how simple that it is to discover the name of any chord in any song that you’re playing! 

Coming up next, I’m going to cover how to get the key of a melody, and how to discover the scale being used. But first - here’s a short promotional message about my “Hand-outs Collection” eBook offer!

Example 4): Learning the Scale and Key of a Melody…
Next I have a simple melody line that can be played over the chords that we had just spent some time learning about in our last example... Here's how that line melody goes...

CREATING A "MELODY MAP"
If we take any melody or guitar solo and we plot the notes out on the fingerboard, we get a quick overview of the notes that are in use, and this easy and simple step will tell us something very important. 

It shows us the solos’ roadmap and that roadmap will lead us to the solos key, and what scale is being used. 

Here’s what the roadmap for that solo I just showed (above), looks like on the neck… 

Example 5). Solo Roadmap on the Neck: 

The solo functions between the 5th fret region off of a “G note” up to as high as the 2nd string 10th fret note of “A.” In between, we have a scale box shape giving us the notes of “E, A, B, D and G.”

After we discount any repeating notes, we end up with a grand total of five tones and that means we have a Pentatonic scale. 

Once we look back at the solo (shown above), and we take notice that the starting note (which is a “G,” and, the ending note (also a “G,”), we can come to the conclusion here, that we have a key of “G” solo, and it uses the, “G Pentatonic Scale.” 

Now that you know about this simple theory trick why wouldn’t you do this before you; study, play through, practice or memorize anything going forward from here on out? 

Knowing this stuff only takes a few minutes of very simple work, and if you do it the breakdown will tell you a ton of information about what you’re playing, thus making you a far more skilled guitar player along a with MUCH better musician.