Well, what I mean is we've only gone over major scales in class, so those are the only ones I'm familiar with. I've also seen the scales in the "Fretboard Logic" book, which I think are called pentatonic scales (maybe), so I know those, too.
You guys are all talking about progressions and IV chords and stuff like that and I really don't know what that means. In piano, we've been going over triads and inverting them. As far as guitar is concerned, I know the standard major chords and the main minor variations of a couple of them and also power chords, but beyond that I'm pretty clueless as to how all this stuff works. I downloaded this program for my ipod that's supposed to help me learn (by ear) intervals and chords and scales (whether it's a major/minor etc, not if it's a D or whatever). So I guess what I'm saying is I only have a very basic understanding of notes. When we (my band) write songs, we basically just come up with a cool sounding riff and then build on that with other things that sound good together.
For an example, in one of our songs, I can basically play an open D power chord (dropped tuning) for the whole song, but when I'm playing real chords for a different part, it goes Dm->Am->Dm (except without the F this time). Would that be in D or in Dm? This is all very confusing to me...
That song would
probably be in D minor, because a D power chord (D5) isn't major or minor. There's only a root and 5th in the chord; the 3rd is what determines major or minor.
However, it could be in both. It would depend what the vocal melody is over the D5 part. He could be singing a melody with F# in in, which would give it a major sound, or it could be an F natural, which would give it a minor sound. Modal mixture (mixing chords/notes from major and minor) is fairly common in alternative music like Nirvana and a lot of 60s pop rock like Beatles and stuff.
It's not always possible to tell what key a song is by seeing the chords. Sometimes you have to hear the melody too. Even sometimes sheet music will have a key signature of 2 sharps, which would indicate D major (or B minor), but the song is actually in the key of A. It just so happens that it has a Mixolydian sound and uses
G natural notes so often that they wrote the song in that key to save from having to write a bunch of accidentals.
For instance, you might see a song with the chords A, G, and D. A strict diatonic approach would say that's a V, IV, and I chord in D major. But if you hear the song, it might be clear that A is actually the tonic because of how the vocal melody cadences, etc. So the chord progression would actually be analyzed as I, bVII, IV.
I know this may be a little over your head at this point, but all I'm saying is that it's not
always as easy as looking at sheet music or seeing a chord chart. I work in the music publishing business, and believe me, there can be mistakes in sheet music---including misleading key signatures.
Having said all that, do a search on the net for "determining key center" or "figuring out the key of a song" and you'll probably come across some chord theory that tells you the diatonic chord formula: I is major, ii is minor, iii is minor, IV is major, V is major, vi is minor, viiº is dimished, etc. Then, by looking at the chords of a song, it's usually easy to determine the key, because they will only fit within one or two keys. However, as I said, this approach is not failsafe. This system would tell you that the chords I listed above are in D major, which is not always the case.
) - and, assuming the guitar is tuned the way you think it is, you can map the tonic to them and start to visualize the key and related chords on the guitar neck. A less casual approach would be to learn all the notes, scales, chords, modes, etc. for the tuning(s) you use, which is a good thing to do, but takes a lot of work.
