Understanding The Formula Chart : Basics


The formula chart relates a Number to EVERY note on the guitar. There are 12 Notes on the guitar that consist of 7 natural notes and 5 enharmonic notes...

Your Natural notes are - C - D - E - F - G - A - B

Your enharmonic notes are the sharps (#) and flats (b):

C#/Db - D#/Eb - F#/Gb - G#/Ab - A#/Bb

(Note:Enharmonic notes sound the same as far as tone.)

Now when you write all the notes Naturals and Enharmonics together you get all the notes chromatically...(See Image 1...)

In the pic of the notes chromatically I added the 13th note to complete the octave. Now if you look at the notes chromatically you'll notice that there are no notes between E - F and B - C...
Here's how the numbers get placed above the notes.
(See Image 2 .)As you can see every note has a relative number..For the sake of ease I made the chart in the key of C.(But it can be changed to any key..)
Now let's say we wanted to figure out the notes for the C Major (Ionian) scale..(Using the Scale Formulas I posted in the scales section) We take the Numbers I wrote in that and Relate the to the notes underneath. So the C Major Scale is:
1- 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 1

When you find these numbers on the chart and compare numbers to notes you get:
1- 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 1
C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C

You now have the notes needed to make up the Major scale in the key of C..
Now say you want to make a Major Chord(Using the Chord Formulas I posted) we see that the Numbers Needed to make a Major Chord are : 1 - 3 - 5

Again compare numbers to notes. You should get :

1 - 3 - 5
C - E - G


Now Lets do the Natural Minor Scale (Aeolian)..the numbers for it are:
1 - 2 - 3b - 4 - 5 - 6b - 7b - 1

Again compare............You should get..........

1 - 2 - 3b - 4 - 5 - 6b - 7b - 1
C - D - Eb - F - G - Ab - Bb- C

Now The Minor Chord.....The Numbers are : 1 - 3b- 5

Compared you get: 1 - 3b- 5
C - Eb - G

(Note By looking at the C Minor Scale you can also see how many flats are in it (3) this relates to the circle of 5ths....So if you were to look at a piece of sheet music and it has three flats as the key signature it would be in C Minor)

Now say you want to change the Key of the chart to A
You would still use the same numbers just change the notes beneath them.....
1- 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 1
A- B -C#- D - E -F#-G# - A


Do the same for chords just change the notes beneath the numbers
just be sure to place the notes beneath them in chromatic order...