Originally Posted By: Guitarhacker
Most songs have 3 basic chords... which are the 1 the 4 and the 5...


And this is exactly where the divide begins, Herb. Let me play "newbie" for a minute.

"The 1 the 4 and the 5 of what?"

Your answer would correctly be "The 1, 4 and 5 of the scale."

"What's a scale?"

I have discovered that trying to explain theory to people with no music background is similar to having some little green alien drop to the earth from Mars and try to teach him about football or baseball. There is SO MUCH implied knowledge involved. You and I and whoever else is in this thread KNOW 1-4-5. (We even know about 6 minor!)

My best male pal Andy has like 6 guitars and all he can play is the intro to Smoke On The Water. He asked me to try to teach him. I said "I can't. I can't teach you anything about guitar until you know enough about music to know what a half step is. And a 3rd. And a 5th. I can't teach you about the guitar neck until you can relate that one fret equals a half step, and know what steps are." And so forth. I sat him down with a guitar on his shoulder and had him put a finger on any fret he wanted. I then played that note on the keyboard and told him to move down one fret and showed him the correlation of that fret to the keyboard. I spent an hour with him. For the whole hour I saw the same the same look on his face that you'd see when if you tried to explain long division to your dog.

Now, I am a horrible teacher under any conditions, but for someone with absolutely no ear to know when music moves up or down, major being "happy" and minor being "sad"... I can't do it. The is as frustrating to me as I imagine it would be to try and explain to someone who can't see what "red" is. When I try to teach music I find myself saying things like "How can you not know that??"

I don't know the OP here or their level of musical knowledge. If 1-4-5 is beyond the scope, advising them is going to be difficult.