Hello everyone! I’m Dan Sindel and welcome to EZGTR online video guitar lesson. This is part two of learning how to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major and as always we’ve got lots of work to do today. And what we are going to do is we’re going to take a look at the easy version of the e-Book. We’re going to work through these sections A to sections B and we’re going to have a brief discussion of the intervals a little bit of basic theory for you guys then we’re going to take a look at the complete version of the e-Book and work through bar seven through bars 10 which is a basic study of intervals.
Now, if you have not already downloaded the e-Book this is a great time to do that, so please go to www.ezgtr.com, sign up for the newsletter real quick and we’ll send you a link to download the e-Book. And before we get started I always have to give credit where credit is due. And I’d like to thank my sponsors, Seymour Duncan Pickups for helping me out with this P-Rail Pickups. If you haven’t played these pickups they’re really cool. You can actually get three pickup sounds in one pickup. And I also like to thank Willy’s Custom Guitar Repair for wiring up the guitar for me.
It’s a great idea for us to analyze the score of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major before we start playing the song. That way you have a better understanding of the actual composition itself. Now, a Canon is when a piece of music is imitated and repeated. And as you can see here guitar one in the red area comes in two measures after the base and the basic chords come into play then two measures later at bar five in the blue area, guitar two comes in paying exactly the same thing as guitar one. And it will continue that way to the very end of the song. Guitar three which is in the green area will now come in two measures later at bar seven or section B. And as you can tell guitar three is arranged differently than guitars one and guitar two. And this is true until the end of the piece. Guitar three has been specifically arranged for intermediate players in mind. But beginning players have no worries. It really isn’t all that much harder than guitars one or guitars two and 0211 for you a couple of extra cool things to learn in the long run.
Let’s go ahead and look at the easy version of the score. We’re going to look at section A bar three. Our first note is an F# on the high E string and play E and a D and a C# and a B and an A and a B and a C#. Now we come in to bar five, and this is where a guitar two also enters. And our first note is a D, C#, B, A, G, F#, G, E.
Now, let’s look at section B, we’re going to look at bar seven and bar eight. I’m going to play this just a little slower for you because now we’re looking at sequences of eighth notes. Here we go, one, two, three, four, D, F#, A, G,F#, D, F#, E, D, B, D, A, G, D, A, G. Now, you notice some coiling at the ends of the notes as opposed to the numbers on the tab. I’m a big advocate of reading notation and if there's any way where you could just take a little bit of time and learn to read the notes if you’re not very familiar with the notes, it will only benefit you in the long run.
Now, we’re going to look at bar nine and bar 10. The third note it’s an open E and we’re going to use that as a pivot point to move from the second position up to the ninth position then we’re going to move to the 14th position. So bar nine will look like this, F#, D, open E, now we shift positions to the ninth position, we play C#, D, shift to the 14th position F#, A and then we play the lower rack to the D, A. So that phrase look like this [Demonstration].
Now, bar 10, we just move up two frets and we play the D, B, G, A, F#, D, play it higher up to the D on the E string then we play it through on the groupings of fives, one, two, three, four, five and resolve a half-step lower. And if you notice from 10 to nine you can slide that note who would look like this [Demonstration] just keep that little slide in there from the D to the C#.
Now, we move from section A to section B. Before we move on and discuss the third guitar part of the complete version of the Canon, which of you had not yet already downloaded this maybe a great time to do that. I would like to discuss some more basic theory with you as I really think it will help shed some light on the next part of our study. What we’re going to do is take a quick look at the basic concept of intervals. And once again, I thought it would be fun to give the guitar wheel to illustrate the point. So let’s zoom in.
Intervals are the distance between two notes measured by the distance of half steps and/or whole steps. Interval names are qualified by the terms Major, minor, perfect, diminished and augmented. Diminished intervals are one-half steps smaller than minor or perfect intervals. Augmented intervals are one-half step larger than Major or perfect intervals and as a quick reminder a half- step equals one fret and a whole step equals two frets and we are working in the contexts of a chromatic scale which is a scale that consists entirely of half-steps.
Let’s analyze on intervals. A minor second equals one-half step. A Major second equals two half steps or one whole step. A minor third equals three half steps or one whole step and one half step. A Major third equals four half steps or two whole steps. A perfect fourth equals five half steps or two whole steps and one half step. A perfect fifth equals seven half steps or three whole steps and one half step. And a minor six equals eight half steps or four whole steps. And this might be a good time to pause very quickly and talk about a new term and harmonic which means the same pitch that we hear or what our ear may perceive but spelled differently by name. For example, an A# is equivalent to a B flat. And this theory also applies to intervals. By comparing the relationship of notes D to A# we can determine this is an augmented fifth which is D to A, all we do is raise the fifth interval by one half step creating an A# and by comparing the notes D to B flat we do create a minor sixth interval. And we will discuss the Major sixth interval in the next line. So now it’s easy to see that the augmented fifth and minor sixth intervals do have an inharmonic relationship.
Moving it on, a major sixth equals nine half steps or four whole steps and one half step. A minor seventh equals 10 half steps or five whole steps. A Major seventh equals 11 half steps or five whole steps and one half step. And finally, a perfect eight or a perfect octave is equivalent to 12 half steps. And as a brief recap here are the basic intervals and maybe a good idea to write this down [Demonstration].
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services