Don't Fret The Guitar
by Joel Bourque

So the last few months I've been talking about the musical alphabet, 7 notes and sharps and flats and all that stuff. After you get all that straight, you'll notice there are 12 notes in our musical alphabet. Now, I'll fill you in on some practical uses of the all these notes in relation to the “keys” of songs.

“Freebird” is in the key of G, that is common knowledge. But what does that really mean? Songs have a tonal center or “key” and are made up of chord progressions. In ‘Freebird’, G is the main chord you hear. As the other chords are played, they're taking you away from the G. Throughout the song, whether you know it or not, your ear always wants to go back to or “resolve” to that G chord. This creates a tension and release effect that all great music has.

How do you know what key a song is in? A good rule of thumb in determining the key of a song is to look at the last chord. 90% of the time, the last chord is the key of the song (don't worry about the other 10% right now). Wanna be cool and play a screaming solo over a tune? You better know what key you're in. If the song is in G, grab a G pentatonic scale and go to town. If you solo in the wrong key, your audience is sure to notice, trust me it's not a good feeling. Any of the 12 notes in the musical alphabet can be the key of a song.

Here's some tips about keys of songs in regards to the instruments you're playing with. None of this stuff is written in stone, just things I've noticed from past experience. All instruments have their “comfort keys”. For example, take a 3 chord blues tune. Ask a guitar player, “What key?” He or she will most likely want E or A. Why? Because those keys contain the open strings and it's just easy to get licks in those keys. Ask a keyboard player and they'll want C. C has no sharps or flats, this means no black keys, so it's easy to get licks off of the white keys. The white keys are like the open strings of a guitar, they're just easy to play. Trumpet players like Bb. Saxophone players, depending on what type of sax they're playing, like Bb or Eb. A good player can play in any key, however these keys lend themselves to licks that are easy to play.

 Last month I mentioned I would start turning you on to some guitar players you might not know about. This month we lost a great player to cancer, Jeff Healey. You may remember his hit from the late 80's, “Angel Eyes”. Not only was he blind, he played the guitar on his lap and played the fire out of it. Check out his first album, “See The Light”. There's some excellent playing on there. I remember the first time I heard that record, I thought to myself, “I want to sound like that!” After 22 years, I'm still trying.