Hey Friend,

In order to know which scale notes to use when creating a melody or soloing, you can take your queue from the chord progression. Songs follow a fairly standard formula when it comes to choosing most chords. 

A song will have a primary key, and that not only determines which notes will be used in the melody, harmonies and solos, but also the chords you'll use. Even though each chord relies on the key its named after to get its notes, the chords that work perfectly in the key all use the notes from that key.

So if you know the key the song is written in, you have a solid base to work from. You've already got a set of notes that you know will work well for your solos or melodies.

You also have a standard set of chords that fit within the key. We'll talk more about that another day, but know this. The chords that work within the key can be constructed from that set of seven notes in the key.

In Rock, Country and Blues, we've got it pretty easy. We're going to use mostly major and minor chords, with some 7 and suspended chords thrown in every so often just to keep things interesting. 

There's a common thread that runs through all these chords - they will always have their one and five notes intact. If you recall, a basic triad (chord made of three notes) is constructed using the one, three and five notes.

Whether it's a major or minor chord will determine if you use a major third note or a minor third. Even with 7 and suspended chords, your one and five notes will always be the tonic and the perfect fifth (a fancy name for the five note). The only note that will change in any of these chords I've mentioned is the third.

What we're talking about is the intervals, or spaces, between the notes. And it should give you a little comfort knowing that if you know how to change that third note, you can create all sorts of cools sounds.

You know I talk a lot about power chords. That's because they're the easiest form of a chord - you only need your chord tonic (one note) and the fifth note. Voila, you have a power chord!

It's when you add in the third note that you start giving the chord more nuanced personality. It's the third that allows a chord to go from happy to sad, airy to excited. The third note steps up the substance of the chord and delivers emotion to move the song forward.

If you know what the chord is called, you have the one note figured out. If it's an A chord, its tonic is the note A. If the chord name has G in it, your one note is G. This applies to major, minor, 7 and suspended chords.

Since the five note will always be the same regardless of which chord we have in these examples, we just have to list out the next four notes after the tonic for the chord in question. An A major chord has a five note of E. I count A as the number one and work from there - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 = A, B, C#, D, E. 

Let me show it another way.

If we have a song in the key of A major, we're primarily going to use the notes A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G# and back to A. The chords that fit well within the key of A major are A, Bm, C#m, D, E, F#m, G#dim and then A. Each of the chords can be created from the A major scale.

The three notes in A major are A, C# and E. The three notes in D major are D, F# and A. Even the G#dim (G# diminished) chord is easy - G#, B and D. Luckily, we don't really use diminished chords in Rock!

The point is, if you know the key, you can write out the scale, as long as you know the pattern (more on that tomorrow). Then you have the notes, which will show you the notes that make up each chord. The one note is the tonic and the name of the chord, then count to the third and finally the fifth notes to fill out the guitar chord. 

Want just the power chord? Just look at the one and five notes from that scale and you're all set.

I put together chord charts for over 250 power chords in an ebook. I call it Easy Power Chords. If you need to start rocking quickly and don't have time to learn all the ins and outs of chord voicings and inversions, you can get a copy of Easy Power Chords right here. You can be rocking by this afternoon.

Peace~

Dave