The Guitarator Suite of Apps

The ultimate guitar reference tools for all platforms

Guitarator Toolbox
for Windows

Includes Chorderator, Scalerator, and Reverse Chorderator
Lefty mode
Listen to chords and scales
Share chord shapes

Guitarator Toolbox 2.0
for Mac OS X

Includes Chorderator, Scalerator, and Reverse Chorderator, PLUS Metronome and Tuner
Lefty mode
Listen to chords and scales
Share chord shapes

Chorderator
for Android

Look up chords for any tuning
Listen to chords
Share chord shapes
Find related chords and scales

Reverse Chorderator
for Android

You design the chord, the app tells you what it’s called.
Listen to the chord you designed.
Integrates with Chorderator for Android

Chorderator
for iPhone and iPad

Look up chords for any tuning
Listen to chords
Share chord shapes
Find related chords and scales

Reverse Chorderator
for iPhone and iPad

You design the chord, the app tells you what it's called.
Listen to the chord you designed.
Integrates with Chorderator for iPhone and iPad (iOS)

FREE Online Tools

Chorderator

Look up chords

Scalerator

Look up scales

Chord Designer

Reverse chord lookup

Pentatonic scales

This will be a fun lesson. Pentatonic scales are easy to learn, easy to play, and they sound like rock ‘n’ roll. If you want to start improvising or creating solos on guitar, chances are you’ll want to learn at least one or two pentatonic scale shapes. Most blues guitar parts are based around the pentatonic minor scale, or a close variation of it.

The best part about pentatonic scales is that if you know the major scale, you already know how to play the pentatonic major scale and the pentatonic minor scale. (If you don’t, don’t worry. I’ll teach you here, or you can read about major scales.)

Seventh Chords

Previously, I talked about the basic three-note chord types, the triads. To review, there are four basic types that are commonly used. Here they are with their interval formulas:

Major	Minor	Augmented	Diminished
root, major third, perfect fifth	root, minor third, perfect fifth	root, major third, augmented fifth	root, minor third, diminished fifth

To each of these chord types, we can add more notes to create more complicated chords. There is no limit to what we can add, but the most common type of note to add is a seventh, either a minor seventh, major seventh, or diminished seventh. As you can imagine, when combined with the four chord types we have to start with, this leads to, like, a million different chords (ok, actually 12, but you get the idea). Fortunately, some are used more frequently than others, and some are almost never used, so I’ll present the most common ones first.

Why do they call it a “capo?”

Most of the words surrounding guitars seem like they come from analogies to the real world. “Head,” “neck,” and “body” are obvious. “Bridge” is a bit of a stretch, but still makes sense. But the word capo is a strange one. It has no parallel in the real world, so I went to find out where it comes from. Off to the Online Etymology Dictionary!

Turns out “capo,” like a lot of other musical terms, comes from Italian. The Italian word capo literally means “head.” They say capo tasto to refer to a capo, meaning approximately “head of the fingerboard.” So there you have it. I guess since “head” was already taken, we had to come up with something new.

Pythagoras and Me

As someone who is interested in both music and science, I find myself fascinated with the concept of scales. Why are they the way they are? If music is so mathematical, why does it seem so arbitrary. There are 12 notes in an octave, but what’s so special about this number 12? Then the major scale is formed from seven of those notes, which is strange. If the major scale is so nice and melodious and all that, why aren’t the notes evenly spaced? Well, I set out to find some answers. I spent hours scouring the internet, visiting the library, reading books, scratching figures in a notebook. You don’t have to do that, because here’s what I found out, all nicely summarized.

Melodic Minor Scales

Ok, stick with me for one more minor scale type, then it gets easier. I promise! This lesson builds on previous ones, so if you haven’t read my other scale lessons, now’s a good time:

And now the melodic minor scale. I think you’ll begin to understand why the natural minor is called the natural minor. It’s the one that’s based on the major scale, and is considered more pure. The other two, the harmonic and melodic minors, were reached by tweaking around with the natural minor. The harmonic minor raised the seventh note in the scale so we could have that strong major V chord (that is, the chord based on the fifth note of the scale). The melodic minor makes one more alteration.