Understanding Musical Keys on the Guitar
When someone says to you, this is in the key of A or the Key of C, do you know what they mean? Do you know what chords fit well together in the key of D? If not then this lesson is for you. I’m going to explain a little bit about what a key is, how to determine what chords fit well together in a given key and how to use the concept of one, four, five to find those chords in any key.
So What is a Key
The exact definition of a musical key can be complex, so I’ll try and keep it simple. When someone says this is in the Key of E major what they mean is this piece of music is harmonically centered on the note of E and makes use of the notes in the E major scale.
guitar Chords in Keys using One-Four-Five
Ok so that definition is a little heavy on the theory, but this will simplify it for you. We understand that a key is focused around one particular note and that notes major or minor scale, depending on the note. How ever on the guitar and in song writing rarely, if ever, are all the notes from a scale used.
A pattern exists known as one-four-five. That pattern corresponds to the notes inside the scale in question. So the pattern is that the first, fourth and fifth notes of a given major or minor scale sound best together and are therefore found in most popular music today.
An Example in the Key of A
In the Key of A we know that we’re going to be playing an A chord, but what else would fit with it?
Well let’s look at the A major scale and apply the one-four-five concept.
A B C# D E F# G# A
The above notes makeup the A major scale. We can see that the one is the A but what are the four and five notes? In this example they are D and E.
So one-four-give (often written with roman numerals as I IV V) is A – D – E. If we play those as chords rather then notes we get a great sounding chord progression in the key of A.
The video below will provide more insight into the one-four-five concept and also provide another example for you to learn from.
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