From
my time working in information systems satellite encryption , I took away an understanding which I would carry over to my true passion ( music .)
In this thread I am going to demonstrate the application of music theory ( jazz ) applicable to the guitar.

Let us begin with a universal visual chart
( In standard concert tuning.)
Using this chart combined with my Samsung Galaxy Note 9 pen features, I will be able to demonstrate the music theory information on the guitar fretboard for you , where it takes me no time at all ( maximize information)
I hope you enjoy this thread.



We can see that the chart shows the natural notes as well as faded enharmonic sharps and flats .
The position of the layout is what the visual view of looking at the fretboard while playing it .
Here we can see the fret numbers located on the fretboard.

 

Starting with C major KEY.
CDEFGABC.

Note ( please forgive the messy writing I'm sure it will not get in the way of receiving the information component however I'll do my best )

We have 2 main positions for the C major scale .
Position 1 starts on the 2nd string
Position 2 starts on the 1st string .

Now let's look at the C major KEY
CDEFGABC
Diatonic chords

1.CEGB..Cmaj7
2.DFAC..Dmin7
3.EGBD..Emin7
4.FACE..Fmaj7
5.GBDF..G7 dominant
6.ACEG..Amin7
7.BDFA.. Bmin7b5



We are first going to look at our Diatonic
Chords of the key in the set of middle 4 strings .
Starting with C major7 CEGB above .
From low to high string here are the fingers to fret with.
First finger, ring finger, middle finger, pinky

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

Let's now take our position which begins on the 2nd string, and see the diatonic C major chords horizontality across the Guitar fretboard.



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Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

We have 3 Functions which the 7 Diatonic chords fit into.
Tonic - Main character , relaxed , still, no motion .

Subdominant- some motion , movement, tension

Dominant - farthest from home, very tense. Villian.
A lot of motion . The most movement.

Let's see in the KEY of C major .

The 7 Diatonic chords grouped by their function .

Tonic.
1.Cmajor7 CEGB
3.Emin7 EGBD
6.Amin7 ACEG


The way it works is that our KEY of C major ,
Means that is our center focus and everything else related to it in some way.
So first we want to see the other chords in the key that are swappable with our tonic.
We can get the most value out of understanding this
By naming the 7 chords 1 - 7 .
Many times you will see a Roman numeral for this label .
In our chart about we have taken our inner 4 string diatonic chord Voicings , and displayed our 3
Chords from the key that are tonic .
I Cmajor7
iii Eminor7
vi Aminor7

Although they have their own flavor , they represent the same thing. Tonic ( home relaxed , main character

That's already 3 chords out of the seven that means 4 chords are left .
Let's now take a look at our Subdominant chords.
ii Dminor7
IV Fmajor7

As before these 2 chords are 2 flavors of the same function Subdominant.( Some motion movement)
With C major as our center point focus
The subdominant is creating motion and movement with a bit of tension .

In the KEY of C major ( these 2 Diatonic chords can be swapped out for each other at any time
( That you need a Subdominant function.)

Now we have covered 5 chords out of 7 total diatonic chords .

The last 2 are Dominant function.
The villian of the story ,lots of motion,
Very tense ,dominant function is pulling towards a tonic.
In the KEY of C major
V7. G7 GBDF dominant
vii% BDFA Bmin7b5 or B half diminished
These are 2 flavors of the dominant function and can be swapped out for each other .


Now we have seen how all 7 of our chords fit into 3 groups .
Tonic
Subdominant
Dominant .

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

All wrong I'm afraid.
A guitar works by plucking the string making it vibrate and transferring the energy to the soundboard creating a "note". The pitch of the vibrating string can then be changed higher or lower depending on the length of the string.

 

Oh shucks! No wonder why I couldn't get the sound to come out!

 

Our 7 chords are grouped by 3 functions and any chord in the same function can be swapped out for each other . ( Flavors and varieties).

Let's look at how these functions work.

You begin with the Tonic and the main chord of the KEY , in this case Cmajor.

Chord progressions are built from this blueprint.
( By function )

Tonic/ Subdominant/
Tonic/ Dominant /
Tonic / Subdominant/ Dominant/

These are the Lego peices from which a progression is built .

They can be snapped together in different ways and also turned around .
Subdominant/ Tonic
Dominant/ Tonic
Subdominant/ Dominant/ Tonic

If we take a starting tonic , ( say C major )

Cmajor 7 CEGB/ Cmaj7CEGB/

This is level 1 , the plain chord .
Level 2 is expanding so that we have the dominant creating tension then resolving to the tonic .

G7 GBDF/ Cmaj7CEGB/

Level 2 or V7 to I ( 5 chord to 1 chord)
Is one the most powerful harmonic movements .
You see we create a lot of motion with the dominant then we resolve it to the main character
Making it more powerful once we land in the C major . ( Compared to C major by itself.)


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The Major 6 Is the most consonant 4 note major chord. If we look at Cmajor6 or C6 CEGA compared to Cmajor7 CEGB , we can see that our V7 dominant
Chord which belongs to Cmajor has these notes .
G7 dominant.
GBDF
1357
The B note is important in G7 our 3rd
The tritone B 3rd and F 7th create our tension that needs to be resolved . The way it resolves is the B slides up to C ( called leading tone )
And F resolves to E the 3rd of C major .
This means that Cmajor7 leaves a tension there when going from G7 to Cmajor 7
However the 6th in Cmajor the note A
Does not leave the tension there .
G7 to C6 is more powerful
This means we are going to use the Major6 as the tonic chord in the KEY
( Other more advanced reasons will be explained in depth later on.)
So now on C6, Cmaj6, Cmajor6 CEGA
Is going to be our 4 note chord.
Next we are also going to modify our Dominant chord slightly as well.
G7.GBDF
......1357
The G note just carries over from G7 to Cmajor.
We are going to modify G7 so instead of using G note we are going to use G# or Ab . ( b9th)
The reason is that we get a more powerful tension then G# resolves to G ( remember leading tone )
The half step is one the most powerful motions in music .
( Later a deeper explanation will be given about these changes)

So now that we modify G7 to have G#
GBDF G7
G#BDF or BDFG# is called Bdiminished7


Cmajor is C6 or Cmajor6 CEGA
And G7 is Bdim7 BDFG#

On the guitar these changes also open up more playing options because of the fingerings (

Starting with our C6 ( Cmajor 6 CEGA
We have chord voicing inversions

We are going to begin with the highest set of 4 strings.
We are going to look at the one chord C6 ( Cmaj6
Our tonic .
Across the fretboard in every inversion .
( Chord inversion is just changing the order of the notes so it's same identical chord .)


And now because the next level of detail from having the tonic by itself is to add in the dominant function .
We are going to look at our dominant chord Bdim7 BDFG# ( it's still a G7 or V7).
Where it's always right next to a Cmaj6 voicing shown above so that we can see all the places to go V7 to I or Bdim7 to Cmaj6 ( G7 to Cmajor)


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You see Bdiminished7 is a symmetrical chord
Made of minor 3rds.
It means on guitar the shape stays identical as you travel through your inversions.
( It means a lot of things they will be explained later )

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

And let's not forget:
Pinch harmonics
Tap harmonics
Palm Mute
Pick Slide
Dropping the guitar
...


@MMJ2017 , I, for one, appreciate the effort you put into these posts. Just wanted to leave that here!

 

Now we will look at the C major 6
On the middle set of 4 strings .



Cmaj6 on the bottom set of four strings



Now we can see the entire fretboard covered in C6
C major 6.

Notice that C6 CEGA, is same notes as
Aminor7 ACEG
It's the same notes and all all these voicings covering the entire fretboard are the same for A minor 7.

Let's now look at our 3rd chord in the KEY
Emin7 ( aka G6)
EGBD
1357

If we look at one of our Voicings for C6 ( Amin7)
We can move it up or down to make it Eminor7.

All we have to understand is that each maj6 / min7
Voicing is a shape .

Here we slide down the C6/ Amin7
Shape to create a Emin7 / G6 shape.
Emin7....Gmaj6
EGBD....GBDE
1357.....1356


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Here we see that the same voicing shifted down.
Is used to create the other chord .
C6 / Amin7
Shifts down to become Emin7 / G6
Then down again to be Dmin7 / F6

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

In the KEY of C major .
We looked at our dominant function moving to our tonic function.
While still staying in the KEY
Each of the 7 chords gets a dominant function as it's level 2 .
Remember level 1 is the tonic chord
Level 2 is dominant to tonic .
First let's see our Bdim7 ( G7) moving to Cmaj6


The blue G7 ( Bdim7) moves down to C6 Cmajor resolving downward , we can see 2 different locations here in the image.

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We can see a few examples here where for every voicing of C6 it expands to level 2.
V7 to I or G7 to C6 ( Bdim7, to C6)
This is going to work the same for every chord in the KEY ( they each have a tense dominant chord which resolves to them)

In this next image we see a G7 ( Bdim7)
Resolving to it's tonic Cmaj6.
Then we shift the entire shape to
Take the ii chord Dmin7
And using tonicization , we make it's V7 chord A7
Resolve to Dmin7

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Any chord in our key all 7 , can have it's dominant move to it.

We have looked at this blueprint for chord progressions so far .
Dominant to tonic.
The next blueprint shape is
Subdominant / tonic/

Using the exact same chart above we take our
4 chord Fmaj7 and we use F6 FACD also Dmin7DFAC

F6 / to C6/

Subdominant/ Tonic/

Next we can use our 3rd shape
Subdominant/ Dominant/ Tonic/

Dmin7/ G7/ Cmaj6/

Using the exact above chart we can play the
Dmin7 shape then Bdim7 shape then Cmajor6 shape .

Now we can expand again.
Take our last shape Dmin7/ G7/ C6/
Put a V7 before Dmin7 so
A7/ Dmin7/ G7/ C6/
But we turn it around like this .

C6/ A7/ Dmin7/ G7/

Practice this with the above chart

Let's take this " turn around " and now see another example of the same thing .

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So we have a progression in every location where a voicing exists.
For example we covered the guitar in C maj6
In the top 4 strings middle 4 strings lower 4 strings.
4 inversions per octave.
Now level 2 is to expand each one of them Voicings to be Bdim7 ( G7) to Cmajor ( C6)
Level 3 is each place we have a voicing for Cmaj6
We can expand it to be a " Cadence"
Dmin7/ G7/ C6/
Level 4 is that each place we have a voicing for Cmaj6 we can create a full 4 chord progression.

C6/ A7/ Dmin7/ G7/

A " turn around" progression.

It is the level 3 's cadence except we add in the Dmin7 dominant chord before it
( Remember our Dominant to tonic )

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

So the first very large concept we have to understand is that each chord covers the whole instrument , each progression covers the whole Ibstrument, that any where you randomly place your hands you have every chord that exists and you have every Progression that exists. ( Same for piano)
This is the secret .
That when you see a form such as
G7/ Cmajor/
Or
C6/ A7/ Dmin7/ G7/

That is not telling you exact what to play .
( Because each chord is everywhere each progression is everywhere , any melodic contour can be made )

It is telling you the underneath cement foundation of the music itself.
That's what music theory teaches you .
In this codebreakers edition thread , I will step by step guide you through decoding the guitar so that you can eventually play any melody on any chord or chord progression . You can control at all times high note going to low note to middle note or a Melody that goes down like staircase through progression or go very low then gradually up like staircase. An infinite number of melodies for any form.
Because you have 4 inversions if a chord per octave you can create harmony ant time you have a Melody.
If your playing with other players, no matter what they are doing you'll have a way to create limitless melodies riffs licks and ideas that flow out just like the effortless ability you have to speak .
( Only have to think about an idea and you can start speaking in a way that feels effortless no work no real concentration )
Yes these things take lot of time and effort .
But you can work hard to be musically fluent .
If you follow this thread you will witness the way guitar works step by step.

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

In the KEY of C major

Dmin7/ G7/ C6/




Dmin7 ( also Fmaj6
In the top set of 4 strings covering
Fretboard
Notice same shapes as C6 just shifted .



upload
Dmin7 ( also F6

Across fretboard in middle set 4 strings .
( Notice all same patterns as C6 just shifted location

Now the Dmin7
For bottom set of strings



We can see between these 3 charts we actually have the whole fretboard covered.
That within any area of the instrument you can play Dmin7 and it's the same shapes as the Cmaj6 just shifted another location ( this reuse of patterns will be important once we get to the advanced theory )

We have our Dmin7 on the whole instrument
Let's continue with our G7 ( in form of Bdim7 )
So that we can make a ii V I
( That spans whole instrument )


Middle set of G7 ( as Bdiminished7


Bottom 4 set

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If we remember back to the C maj6 shapes


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Now with the above 9 images we have a full cadence in C major covering the Instrument.

Dmin7/ G7/ Cmaj6/ Cmaj6

Practice taking different patterns if each chord then transition to the next chord near where your at then jump around more then transition to the next chord near where you are at

Try different rhythms out .
Move around with it .
When you play the shapes sometimes play the strings at once other times 1 at s time in that shape you are on .
Let the sound of these shapes guide you to be creative explore ideas .

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

(i play the guitar for 30 years im 44 but) looking at your diagrams ,i'm not too sure anymore

 

I welcome you my fine friend .
I appreciate you being here thank you .

 

And there he goes again

I think you shouldn’t be here
because you should write books and sell them

 

Thanks so much lol
Im grateful , and I hope there something there to inspire you .

 

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Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

Let's now look at taking our Dmin7 chord in C major KEY and attaching the arpeggio to the chord voicing.

Here we see 2 instances of Voicings in yellow
( Drop 2 )
Next we attach the arpeggios to these voicings

upload pictures


We simply take 1 of our Voicings
( Remember 4 Voicings per octave )
Once we have it,
Then we fill in the arpeggio notes ( chord tones )
With s connecting pattern .

Let's see our next chord the G7 ( using Bdim7 here

Our voicing in yellow, then attaching the arpeggios chord tones in orange .


And now for our Cmaj6 tonic,
We put on our Voicings then attach the arpeggio around it using chord tones



Note , because of the limitations of the chart I can only show you a coupled spaced out Voicings otherwise it is too much visually.
But what you do it for each of the 4 Voicings per octave you place in your chord tones from the arpeggio

Now it takes time, but the reason we want to know how to play a chord or chord Progressions any place on the instrument, is that we need to be free to be in any location and play anything coming up next .
If we just learned 1 or 2 ways to play something then you have to constantly reposition yourself depending on the song your playing .
This is distracting you from expressing yourself .

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2019

We have looked closely at the C major Cadence
Dmin7/ G7/ C6/ C6/

Now we have to look at the relative minor
A minor Cadence

Level 1 is Amin6 ACEF#
Level 2 is E7/ to Amin6/
Level 3 is Bmin7b5/ E7/ Amin6/

So you see like the relative major
We begin with our tonic/
( In this case Amin6 / ACEF#
We use the min6 to differentiate from C6 CEGA
So Amin7 ACEG is for major , Amin6 is tonic
Minor
Amin6 ACEF#
Let's start with level 1 and see our Amin6 Voicings



Next let's look at level 2.

Adding the E7 dominant before the Amin6

Level 1 is Amin6/
Level2 is E7/ Amin6/ ( Dominant to tonic/

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Here is our E7 inversions in the top set of 4 strings.

Next up is level 3 the Amin cadence .

Bmin7b5/ E7/ Amin6/
Subdominant/ Dominant/ Tonic/

Here is Bmin7b5
Across the top 4 set of strings.


Now all you have to do it use these 3 graph above

Make
Bmin7b5/ E7/ Amin6/

Using the different Voicings for each chord shown .

Now in this chart we going to see 2 locations of the
A minor Cadence ( level3)
You are going to see that sometimes the chords share notes so use the above charts for reference
( This will give you the concept seeing them move together in 1 chart )



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Between these 2 charts , we get to see the Amin cadence in 4 locations ( connected to the 4 Voicings
Shown above further up for each of the chords .

In summary,
We looked at the relative minor A minor6.
We expanded it to become E7/ Amin6/
We expanded to a full minor cadence
Bmin7b5/ E7/ Amin6/
We seen charts showing each of the 3 chords across the top 4 set of strings , then we seen the above charts for attaching the cadence
Bmin7b5/ E7/ Amin6/
To each of the 4 Voicings
Demonstrating that .level 1
Is your minor chord Amin6
Level 2 is adding the Dominant before it .
E7/ Amin6/
Level 3 is the full cadence
Subdominant/ Dominant/ Tonic/

Bmin7b5/ E7/ Amin6/

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2019