Alteration signs (about sharp, flat, bekar). F-sharp minor scale: varieties, signs, triads, parallel major What is a semitone

The F chord is the barre move that every beginner dreads. You can avoid it, thereby limiting your repertoire. But, if you really want to learn how to play guitar, then sooner or later you will have to learn how to play barre. Moreover, there is nothing complicated about it. If you practice regularly, you will quickly master the F chord.

Fingerings and notation of chords

Chords are indicated by capital Latin letters (A, B, C, D, E, F, G). F is for F major. Additional letters and numbers after the capital letter indicate a specific chord variation. For example, the letter m means that it is a minor consonance. The number 7 indicates that it is a seventh chord, etc.

Unlike a piano keyboard, a guitar neck allows you to play the same harmonies in different positions. Fingering is used to specify how a chord should be played. It looks like this.

The fingering shows where on the fingerboard you need to press a specific string.

Structure of major and minor triads F

F major (F) consists of sounds: F (F), C (C), A (A).

F minor (Fm) consists of the following sounds: F (F), C (C), G sharp (G#).

Notes that are in harmony must be memorized in order to play a chord anywhere on the fretboard. This is very useful when you play in an ensemble or rock band with two guitars.

F (F major) and Fm (F minor) on guitar

Pick up your guitar and start strumming chord fingerings.

F major in first position

Take the barre at the 1st fret. With your middle finger, press the 3rd string on the 2nd fret, place your ring finger and little finger on the 3rd fret, on the 5th and 4th strings.

Play a chord. Surely the first two strings sound dull or not sound at all. If this is indeed the case, then bend your index finger slightly and turn it towards the guitar soundboard. Find the optimal position where all strings sound. At the same time, under no circumstances turn your index finger into a crooked claw. It should be either straight or smoothly bent.

IMPORTANT! Thumb position

When playing barre chords, place your thumb in the middle of the back of the fingerboard. This way your effort will be concentrated on your fingers, and not on your hand and forearm. In this position, the hand will get tired much less.

F minor in first position

Fm differs from F only in the position of the middle finger. When playing a minor triad, it remains free.

F at 3rd fret

You can take F from the 3rd fret. In this case, the fingering will be similar to the D major form. Try placing your fingers as shown in the image below and playing the chord.

Fm on the 3rd fret

The F minor triad from the 3rd fret has the shape of a D minor chord. In practice, it is not used due to the fact that it is inconvenient to move from this position to other harmonies.

F with small barre at 5th fret

And this F variation is similar to C major. Only played not on the 1st fret, but on the 6th fret.

Fm on the 5th fret

Such an unusual Fm fingering can only be found in compositions by guitar freaks like Robert Fripp and Frank Zappa. An ordinary F minor guitarist would never play like that.

F and Fm with barre in eighth position

Fingerings F and Fm with barre in 8th position are used when playing the electric guitar in cases where the instrument needs to be given a brighter sound to the instrument.

The fingerings look like this:

Major triad.

Minor triad.

F and Fm after the 12th fret.

After the 12th fret, all chord fingerings are repeated because the notes on the guitar fretboard are repeated. They just get an octave higher. For example, F at the 17th fret looks the same as at the 5th fret.

If you can't play F major

Beginners usually put off learning F major until the last minute. If you have trouble pressing the barre, there is another way to play F major on the first frets. Look at the fingering and pluck the strings as shown.

Please note that the first 2 strings must be plucked with one index finger.

IMPORTANT! About difficulties

Learn barre anyway. The method of playing F major described above is necessary so that your learning does not slow down. But this fingering is not a complete replacement for the usual F major.

Popular variations of the F chord

Due to the fact that F harmonies are played with barre, there are not too many popular variations. In practice, guitarists use variations with sharps and fifth chords. Less often - non-chords and seventh chords.

F major seventh chord (F7)

The fingering for this variation is as follows.

To get F7, hold down F and remove your pinky from the fingerboard.

F sharp minor (F#m)

F sharp minor is the most popular variation of the F harmonies. It is clamped in the same way as F minor, but not on the 1st fret, but on the 2nd.

Large F nonchord (F9)

F9 is plucked like F7 with the pinky on the 1st string, 3rd fret.

Quintaccord F (F5)

Note that in a fifth chord you only need to play three strings. The rest you must suppress with the palm of your left hand.

The F5 quint chord can be played in either 1 or 8 positions.

1 position

8th position

In the musical environment, fifth chords are called “quints”, or “power chords” (from the English power chords).

INTERESTING.

Some guitarists lower the 6th string a step lower. Thanks to this, the fifth chord can be plucked with one finger.

This technique is called drop tuning. It is often used by musicians working in heavy genres of rock music.

Exercise “Popular Sequences”

Before you start learning songs with F, spend some time practicing the transitions from barre to open chords and back again. The biggest problem for beginners is the inability to quickly pinch all the strings with the index finger and place the remaining fingers in the desired positions. But you can get rid of this problem only through regular training.

Below are the chord progressions you need to practice playing.

Open Chord Progressions

Most popular progression: Am F C E.

Having learned this combination of harmonies, you can easily play songs such as “Everything is going according to plan”, “I was looking for you”, “Whistled”, “My enemy, fear me”, “Half” and a dozen others.

Combination: Dm F E.

As you play this sequence, you practice the transition Dm - F, and then F - E. When you first change position, do not lift your middle finger from the 3rd string. Move only your index, ring and little fingers. The second time you change position, simply move your hand without changing the position of your fingers.

It turns out that you press E major with your middle, ring and little fingers. This is incorrect from the point of view of E fingering, but is very convenient in practice.

Barre sequences

First barre sequence: F C G.

When you play it, you are practicing the transition from one type of barre to another. If you plan on picking up an electric guitar someday, then you definitely need to master this sequence.

Next row of chords: Am, G, F, E.

Here all the chords need to be played using barre. It turns out that you are moving down the bar. In this order, these 4 chords played with barre are sometimes called the "Spanish progression".

The third barre progression includes a sharp chord: F#m, Bm, A, G.

If you have mastered the previous two chord progressions, then playing this one will be quite easy for you. F#m is often found in songs. And almost always it is paired with Bm.

TIP: Think ahead

When you are going to play a song, look at the sequence of harmonies before starting to play. Imagine how you will replace one chord with another. Find comfortable positions. Where to play with open strings, and where to get barre.

It's better to sit for half a minute learning chords than to stop in the middle of a song, choosing the right fingering.

In the future, when you already have some experience, the entire process of analyzing sequences will take a fraction of seconds. But at the beginning of training it is worth devoting more time to this.

Popular Guitar Songs Using F Chords

Below is a list of popular songs that contain F, F7, F#m, Fm. First, take 1-2 songs to study. Learn them so you can play from memory. Expand your repertoire gradually. Try to add only songs that you like. Because they are more enjoyable to play.

• Chizh– “Phantom”
• civil defense- "Everything goes according to plan"
• Chaif- “Oh-yo”
• Bi-2 and Chicherina- “My rock and roll”
• Night sniper s - “You gave me roses”
• Army song- “When is the order?”
• Buckwheat- "Love me Love"
• Nirvana- "Smells like Teen Spirit"
• Movie- "Blood type"
• King and the Clown- “I’ll jump off a cliff”
• Lube- “Carry me, river”
• Beetles– “Battery”
• Aria- "Lost heaven"
• Movie- “Good night”
• 5'nizza- "Soldier"
• 25/17 – “Star”
• A. Prikhodko- "Faith"
• Natalie- “Oh, God, what a man!”
• M. Krug– “Kolshchik”
• "Golden ray of sunshine"

Attention! Increased difficulty level

If you're feeling up to it, try playing the opening riff of the band's "Song 2" Blur. This composition uses the F fifth chord.

Keys F major (F major) and F minor (F minor)

The table shows the harmonies that can be used when playing in the keys of F.

• Although F major is often used in songs, compositions very rarely begin with this consonance.
• Among all the chords, the F variation (F sharp, F sharp minor) is the most commonly used in popular music (e.g. Movie- "Blood type", Rage against the machine– “Bulls on the parade”, etc.).

What to remember

1. F major with barre can be replaced with another fingering, but only for the first time.
2. Once you learn F major, you can play any other chord with barre. This technique will significantly expand your technical capabilities.
3. In F chords there is only one fingering to remember (with barre on the first fret).
4. The chord combination Am, F, C, E allows you to play dozens of popular songs.

In the magical and amazing world of music, every step brings new impressions and unique emotions. Despite the apparent insignificance of the distance to the adjacent piano key (semitone) - this is precisely the smallest step of music, this interval is very significant if we talk about the harmonic component.

Musical angles

A parallel can be drawn with photography: one step to the side brings with it a change in perspective, and the object sometimes appears in a completely different, hitherto unprecedented light.

And since sound waves and light are the driving force of photography, from the point of view of physics (and, as you know, it is useless to argue with the exact sciences), these are phenomena of the same order and often obey the same laws, which means that changes in indicators can cause a similar effect.

The wisdom of the classics

This circumstance, as a rule, is neglected by pop composers and songwriters, whose creations can be transposed into any key at the request of the performer. Using our system of images, one can liken such a composer to a photographer who does not care if the frame is underlit or overexposed - after all, he is photographing the same landscape.

Classical composers, and after them the entire academic school, were well aware of the above circumstance, especially since among them there were scientists in the field of physics and chemistry. The classics were very scrupulous in choosing the tonality of their works. They often included the tonality in the name itself, which means that it could not be changed at the whim of one or another capricious performer.

Colorful music

And such outstanding figures of musical art as Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakov, being endowed with the so-called “color hearing,” perceived each tonality as a certain color scheme.

The phenomenon of color hearing is explained by the existence of the psychological phenomenon “synesthesia,” which refers to the process of involuntary response of one type of receptor to stimulation of another.

Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin used the term “color tonality” to designate the color scheme inherent in a particular musical tonality. It is not without interest that the word “tone,” which is the root of the lexeme “tonality,” is also used in the visual arts and photography.

In addition to color associations, Scriabin endowed keys with such epithets as “spiritual” keys, which include, for example, F-sharp minor, F-sharp major and “earthly, material”, including C major, F major and others.

Color tone

Colors, in turn, for Scriabin, were symbols of the fundamental components of the universe. Thus, red in this system is associated with the “color of hell,” while violet and blue denote the spiritual component of existence. Based on this unique worldview, Scriabin wrote the symphonic poem Prometheus. In addition to the instruments of the symphony orchestra, the score of this work included a light part. At the premiere of Prometheus in 1910, light and music equipment was used for the first time in history. This event foreshadowed the widespread use of such equipment during concerts today, as well as all kinds of laser shows.

However, Scriabin was deeply mistaken in asserting that the color and sound perception of all owners of such hearing is no different from each other.

Many composers had an individual vision of sounds and tonalities, sometimes radically different from Scriabin’s ideas.

A little theory

In this article we will look at just one key - F-sharp minor - and compare ideas about this key among different composers.

To begin with, let's give a little theoretical information about the tonality itself. It has the Latin designation fis-moll. In the key of F-sharp minor, the key signs are sharps F, C and G. Random signs may vary depending on the type of minor (natural, harmonic, melodic, etc.). The F sharp minor scale (natural) consists of the following sounds:

• F sharp;
• G-sharp;
• C sharp;

Despite the fact that this key is not one of the most commonly used, there are many examples of musical art written in this particular key. Among the famous musical works written in this key: “Piano Sonata No. 1” by Schumann, etudes in F sharp minor by Scriabin and Leshgorn. You can’t ignore Scriabin’s “Piano Concerto Op. 20.” Rachmaninov's Prelude in F sharp minor No. 1 is also widely known.

Taste and color...

So, Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin gave the following characteristic of the key of F-sharp minor: he saw the tone of F-sharp in a bright blue color. The composer called this color “the color of pure consciousness.”

It is also worth noting that Scriabin called his “F-sharp minor piano sonata No. 3, op. 23” “States of the soul,” where each of the four movements is named after a certain mental experience.

Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov saw this tonality in a pale grayish-greenish color.

Soviet composer Boris Vladimirovich Asafiev compared F sharp minor to the skin of a ripe orange.

The Belgian composer and musicologist Auguste Gewart, who did not have color hearing, but compiled his own system consisting exclusively of major tonalities, wrote that the expressive potential of the minor is not particularly rich, unlike the major. F-sharp minor, in his opinion, is dull, foggy and blurry.

In 1977-1978 students of the Tver Music College I. Bynkova, M. Dobrynskaya, T. Zaitseva, E. Zubryakova, S. Shcherbakova, N. Yakovleva set out to refute Gevart’s statement, and in the course of analyzing a number of musical works, identify the characteristics of the circle of minor keys. In the course of this research, F sharp minor was given the characteristic “excited.”

The following conclusion is logical: there are as many opinions as there are composers. That's how different F sharp minor can be! Instrumental music is mostly abstract and perceived subjectively. But that’s the beauty of it!

In this article we will continue the conversation about musical notation - we will study accidental signs. What is alteration? Alteration- this is a change in the main steps of the scale (the main steps are do re mi fa sol la si ). What exactly is changing? Their height and name change a little.

Sharp- this is raising the sound by a semitone, flat– lower it by a semitone. After a note is changed, one word is simply added to its main name - sharp or flat, respectively. For example, C-sharp, F-sharp, A-flat, E-flat etc. In sheet music, sharps and flats are indicated by special signs, which are also called sharps And flats. Another sign is used - natural, it cancels all alterations, and then, instead of sharp or flat, we play the main sound.

See what it looks like in notes:

What is a halftone?

Now let's look at everything in more detail. What kind of halftones are these? Semitone is the shortest distance between two adjacent sounds. Let's look at everything using the example of a piano keyboard. Here is an octave with signed keys:

What do we see? We have 7 white keys and the main steps are located on them. It seems that there is already a fairly short distance between them, but, nevertheless, there are black keys between the white keys. We have 5 black keys. It turns out that in total there are 12 sounds, 12 keys in the octave. So, each of these keys in relation to the nearest adjacent one is located at a distance of a semitone. That is, if we play all 12 keys in a row, then we will play all 12 semitones.

Double-sharp and double-flat

In addition to simple sharps and flats, musical practice uses double sharps And double-flat. What are doubles? These are double changes in steps. In other words, double-sharp raises the note by two semitones at once (that is, by a whole tone), and double-flat– lowers the note by a whole tone ( one tone is two semitones).

Natural- this is a sign of cancellation of alteration; it acts in relation to doubles in exactly the same way as to ordinary sharps and flats. For example, if we played F-double-sharp, and then after some time before the note F Bekar appears, then we play a “clean” note "F".

Random and Key Signs

So, let's summarize.

We talked about alteration: we learned what alteration is and what the signs of alteration are. Sharp- this is a sign of raising by a semitone, flat- this is a sign of lowering the note by a semitone, and natural– sign of alteration cancellation. In addition, there are so-called duplicates: double-sharp and double-flat- they raise or lower the sound at once by a whole tone (a whole tone– these are two semitones).

That's all! I wish you further success in mastering musical literacy. Come visit us more often, we will discuss other interesting topics. If you liked the material, click “Like” and share the information with your friends. Now I suggest you take a little break and listen to good music, beautifully performed by the brilliant pianist of our time, Evgeniy Kissin.

Ludwig van Beethoven - Rondo "Rage for a Lost Penny"

When studying solfeggio, students have to deal with many scales. One of them - F sharp minor - will be discussed in our article. It is not too complicated, since it contains only three signs per key, unlike scales and sequences, which can have up to seven main signs, not counting double-sharps and double-flats.

F sharp minor: signs

The scale is the most common minor sequence, and, as already mentioned, contains only three marks in the form of sharps: F, C and G.

The entire sequence is built on this basis. It is designated as F# moll or fis-moll, which is common in guitar scores or chord fingerings.

The tonic note is F#, the subdominant is B, and the dominant is C#. The main triads of the scale are built on these three steps, as will be discussed below.

Parallel major

Like all others, the F sharp minor scale has a parallel major scale. This is A major. The determination technique is very simple. So, for a minor, you should build a semitone upward from the last sign of the key. In our case, this is a semitone from G#, which gives the pure note A.

Two methods can be used to determine the parallel minor. The first involves constructing a minor third down from the tonic (in our case, from the pure note A we get F#. The second method is to count the third from the right in the signs at the key. This will be the desired minor, corresponding to the major.

Many composers have turned and are turning to these tonalities. There are also many of them among Russian classics, since these tonalities have a very warm sound to the human ear.

Varieties of the minor scale

Like any other minor scale, F sharp minor has three main varieties: natural, harmonic and melodic.

The difference between these types of scale sequences is that in the natural minor the forward and backward order is played without changing signs.

In the harmonic scale, when constructing a direct and reverse sequence, the VII step increases by a semitone (for the F-sharp minor scale we get E#).

As for the melodic minor, when playing an ascending scale, the VI and VII steps are raised by a semitone, and when playing a descending scale, the increase is canceled (the bekar sign is placed in the scale itself). For F minor, these steps are D and E.

Minor chords and triads: general principles of construction

If you look at the construction of triads and chords, the general principle is that when creating a chord, a note is simply added to the triad with an offset up or down. In the simplest case, it is the tonic, an octave higher. But, depending on the type of chord, the interval between the note from which the construction is made may be different.

In the case of the F sharp minor scale, the tonic triad contains the notes F#, A and C#. If, for example, it is built with the root of the first octave, adding an F-sharp in the second octave will give the simplest chord.

For a triad based on a subdominant, this will be a combination of notes B-D-F#, for a dominant - C#-E#-G#. Please note: the triad on the V step is always built on the basis of a harmonic minor, since it is this step that is responsible for the sound of the dominant seventh chord, and in it, as is known, the VII step is raised by a semitone.

In general, for all minor triads that are built upward, there is a single rule. From the main note, the minor third is first built, and from the next note, the major third. If you look at the construction of the triad downwards, it is easy to notice that it represents one of the inversions (when each triad is built from each subsequent note with the previous note moved an octave higher).

So it turns out that a triad down from the tonic F-sharp gives a combination of F#-C#-A, but only two octaves lower than the standard upturn. When building down, a perfect fourth down is used first, and then a major third is added to it.

Instead of an afterword

If you look at the F sharp minor scale itself, it is very popular among many composers and performers, only because it corresponds to the parallel A major scale. This is especially pronounced among guitarists, since A major itself is one of the simplest chords in fingering and is played with just three fingers on the second fret, holding the second, third and fourth strings.

With F-sharp minor the situation is somewhat more complicated, because to extract a standard chord you need to master the barre technique.

For pianists, this minor scale does not cause any particular difficulties even when performed at speed.

Quite a lot of examples can be given of the use of this key in conjunction with the parallel major; even rockers performing glam or soft metal music, for the most part, turn to these scales and sequences based on them. In addition, both tones are suitable for both male and female voices. It is not surprising that it is in these genres that the greatest number of compositions are found, based specifically on the standard “Italian square” (A major-F# E major) and its variations.