Lori Linstruth, metal diva and wittiest female shredder has released an addition to her shredtracker “software” (Paper is soft, isn’t it? - and it’s a download …).

These blank guitar tabs will allow you to keep track of your progress as you go along. While the shredtracker only keeps track of your exercise schedule, these will help you see the progress you made. I’ve been using them in conjunction with my own practice routine and I’ll let you know on the progress I made. So far, the D natural minor scale is coming along just fine!

Oh, sure it’s only available in pink and turqoise which may not be the most macho of colour schemes but if you print it on a black-and-white printer, you’ll get a sheet that’s in shades of grey. And we will know ANY grey is a shade of black!

Question: Does A# equal Bb?

Answer: Yes and no.

Actually, in reality, there is a really small difference in interval between sharps and flats. While sharps actually raise a tone, flats lower the tone. The interval by which they officially raise or lower the tone are not the same, i.e., they do not meet each other in the middle. So, from a scientific point of view, A# is not the same as Bb.

However, since Werckmeiser devised a tuning that allowed for all keys to be played on a single keyboard, and since Bach emphasized the tuning problems through “Das WohlTemperiertes Clavier” (commonly referred to as WTC), A# became the same as Bb. The writings of Mozart and Beethoven were actually influenced by WTC.

While A# became the same as Bb in the Werckmeister Tuning, there are actually “rules” as to whether you refer to a raised A or a lowered B as A# or Bb. From a practical point of view, if writing a scale down as raised intervals would contain more sharps than you would get writing a scale down as lowered intervals, you would use the lowered notation since that helps to lessen confusion amongst the performer.

In the previous article, I showed you my Cheat Sheet. In this article, I will explain how to use the Cheat Sheet, to tell what chords are in the scale without actually using the second row.

In your average scale, there will be Major and Minor Chords. There’s also a diminished Chord. I will tell you how to tell if a Chord is Major, Minor or Diminished by using the Cheat Sheet.

Throughout this article, we will be using C Major to discuss things.

A chord is made up of a triad or a combination of three tones. Using the Cheat Sheet, the first chord would be made up of C, E and G. Each chord is made up by taking the root note of the chord, skipping one tone on the scale, picking the next tone on the scale, skipping one tone, picking the next. The “second” tone in your chord is actually called a third. The last tone (third) tone in your chord is called a fifth. This makes sense: if you take into account the skipped tones, you will see that the tones that make up the chord are actually the first, third and fifth tone in the scale.

Now that you know how to form a chord from your Cheat Sheet, how do you know if it’s Major or Minor? Remember that Third we talked about in the previous paragraph? If the number of frets between the Root (C) and the Third (E) is 4, then it’s a Major chord. It it’s 3, it’s a minor Chord.

Now then, how about that Diminished chord? In a lot of contemporary music, be it pop or metal, the Diminished chord is a bit of a prodigal one. It’s often not used or replaced by either a Major or a Minor chord. But if you want to do things right, you’ll use it ;)

If you look at your scale and take a look at all the Major and Minor chords you built using the Cheat Sheet, you’ll notice that there are always 7 frets between the Root note and the Fifth. A Diminished chords however places the Fifth at 6 frets after the Root. That’s why it’s sometimes also referred to as a Dim5. So, if you form a Chord and the number of frets between the Root and the Fifth is 6, it’s a Diminished.

One last thing, since we’re talking about Diminished chords. The counterpart of the Diminished chord is an Augmented chord where the Fifth is actually raised by one tone instead of lowered. So there.

R-1-1-½-1-1-1-½  m m     m °R-1-½-1-1-½-1-1m °   m m    

Print this out and place it somewhere you can see it when playing guitar.

The first two rows make up your Cheat Sheet for Major scales and keys.
The bottom two rows make up your Cheat Sheet for Minor scales and keys.

There are two ways to use your Cheat Sheet. I’m only going to cover the case where you know the key the song is in for this article. I’ll write another one later, explaining how to find out what key a song is in.

If you know the key the song is in, you can use the Cheat Sheet to determine what chords fit to this song and what notes are in the corresponding scale. Simply replace R by the key the song is in and fill in the rest of the notes. “1″ means you get to skip two half tones, while “½” means you only get to skip half a tone. When in doubt, one fret on your guitar is half a tone. For the key of C, you would get these two sets:

C  D  E  F  G  A  BC  D  Eb F  G  G# Bb

The first row are the notes that make up the scale of C Major. The second row are the notes that make up the scale of C Aeolian, which is the basic minor key.
Now that you have these, add the corresponding “marks” that are on the second row of your Cheat Sheet.

C  Dm Em F  G  Am  B°Cm D° Eb Fm Gm G#  Bb

The first row are the notes we found to be in the Major scale, added with the marks from our Cheat Sheet. These are the Chords you can use over this scale.
The second row is the same but for notes in the Minor scale.

What if the song is in MelodicMinor or HarmonicMinor, other scales that are often used in Metal? Well, you simply pay a visit to my scales page which allows you to pick any scale, any key and look at the scales on the neck of your guitar. It doesn’t tell you the chords but I’m thinking about adding that.

Have fun and please let me know if you have any additions or if you found this useful.