Now that we've learned the major chord tones for positions one through five, how do we practice them? Let's take a look. The first step to learning your chord tones really well is practicing each of the five positions a lot. You want to practice each position hundreds of times until you build up some muscle memory for each position, I would practice them randomly all over the neck. Just pick any fret to start from and play one of the positions. I would also make sure you practice the chord tone numbers.

It's going to be really important in the future that you understand your intervals. I would practice learning the intervals from the root note. For example, this is a major third 1313131313 this is a perfect fifth 15151515 This is a major seventh 1717171717 and this is an octave 121121121. I would practice this exercise in all octaves for the five chord tone positions. Now let's take a look at step number two. The second step for practicing your chord tones would be using the circle of fifths chart.

This chart has been added to this lecture as a resource. I would download it and print out this PDF or just view it as you need it in the course. You can go about using this chart in a couple of different ways to practice your chord tones. First, start with number one. What you're going to do is play the major chord tones for position number one out of C. Then you're going to go up a fifth to G and play the major chord tones for position number one out of G. Then you're going to go up a fifth from a G, which is a D and play D position one. You're going to continue this pattern of fifths until you play all 12 keys and position one.

Now I'm going to demonstrate this exercise. Okay, now I'm going to demonstrate how to go around the circle of fifths using the chord tones for position number one. So what we're going to do is we're going to find I'm going to start with C Since C has no sharps or flats, I like to start with C and then go go around up a fifth around to all 12 keys. So I'm going to go ahead and start with C here, which is on the sixth string, eighth fret. And instead of playing you know, the basically the four position are both octaves, I'm just going to play the first octave like this. You of course can then go ahead and play, you know the full range of the position.

So if we're going to start here, we're going to play C. Then we're going to go up a fifth. To do that, what we're going to do is we're going to start with this C and then we're going to go up two frets and over one string, whatever note this is, which happens to be a G. That's the next position that we're going to play. So we're going to go here to G. We're going to play the G chord tones for position number one. Remember, I'm only playing half the pattern, then a fifth above A G is a D. So we're going to go up two frets over one, we find a D here, that's a fifth. So we're going to start on this D here on the sixth string, 10th fret. Then we're gonna go a fifth above this D, which is an A, then we're going to go a fifth above an A, which is e. So I'm going to go up here to the sixth string, 12th fret on this E right here.

Then a fifth above an E is a B. So I'm going to go up here to the beat here. That was on the sixth string, seventh fret. Then we're going to go above fifth above a B, which is F sharp or G flat. So we're gonna come down here to the the second fret. I'm going to go a fifth above and F sharp, which is C sharp or D flat.

Which is on the sixth string, ninth fret. Then a fifth above this C sharp is G sharp or a flat, and that is going to be on the sixth string, fourth fret. Alright, so that was an H sharp, we're going to go a fifth above a sharp, and it's going to be a D sharp or E flat. So we're going to go right here, which is on the sixth string, 11th fret, we're going to go now we need to go a fifth above any flat, which is going to be a B flat. So we're going to find that on the sixth string, sixth fret. All right, then we're gonna go a fifth above a B flat, which is F. I could play it here, which is basically open here so you can see that but instead, I'm going to play it up here.

It's just easier to play since we're not using any open notes. So I'm just going to play it up here on the sixth string, 13th fret. And then a fifth above and F will be back to C. That's basically how I would handle practicing all five different patterns for the chord tones, I would then do position 234, and five. The third step to practicing your chord tones is to pick a key and then play the chord tones for all five positions in that key. For example, I will pick the key of G, I would play the chord tones for G major position one. Then I would play the chord tones for position number two and then position number three position number four and then position number five.

I would practice the positions going up the neck and going down the neck. Once you get comfortable with this exercise in the key of G, I would do the same exercise in all 12 keys. You could randomly pick whatever key you feel like working on. The main guitar keys are E, G, A, C and D. I would recommend going around the circle of fifths starting in the key of C major. That way you can cover all of the chord tones in all five positions for all 12 keys. Obviously that would take quite a while to practice.

So I would just pick one key each day. Now let's take a look at my last step for practicing the chord tones. The last step for practicing the chord tones would be to improvise with them. This can be somewhat limiting because you only have access to four notes. You may not think it really sounds that great, but remember, it's just an exercise to help you learn and see the chord tones better. Here's a demonstration in the key of G I think this can be a good exercise to learn how to add in some chord tones into your rhythm playing.

To make this exercise a bit more fun and challenging. You can change the chords. Let's say I'm going to play the chords G, C, and D. Here's an example. These are the steps that I use to get my chord tones down, but you can certainly come up with your own fun and creative ways to practice chord tones.