New to the guitar, what does it mean to play in notes like e minor?

Question

So i am new to the guitar. currently practicing on a acoustic guitar. I am wanting to play rock music and people keep saying most rock songs are played in e minor. does this mean the e string is tuned to minor or does it mean something else?

Answer 1

In your example, the minor chord note is the 3rd note of the scale of E which is G and not G# .

Every time you play a major chord, the 3rd note of that particular scale is dropped 1/2 a tone down and gives it the minor note to play in that chord.

Answer 2

Yeah, sorta what everyone says.

I guess you mean E minor scale, but of course there are 3 types of minor scale, evil huh?  A scale, major or minor, is basically a formula for progressing through notes.  Major scale follows whole/whole/half/whole/whole/whole/half step pattern (each fret is a half step - with 12 per octave). Ugh.  (And no, rock and every other style of music can be and is played in a variety of keys).

Here check out Ricci Adams Music Theory site, nice easy lessons, if there's anything easy about music theory.  Personally, I think it's easier to learn to play the scales and then get the theory.  So check out the free lessons at the Utube link.

Answer 3

It means something else.

Chords are called by the key the music is written in. For example "Minuet in G" is written in the key of G. If you were to play this on the guitar, you'd use a lot of the G chord fingering because this is the key it's written in.

If a piece of music was in the key of E minor, then you would be either using a lot of notes from the E minor scale or chords from the E minor scale depending on the music.

However any song, when strumming chords, can shift to the the Em (m means minor)  chord at anytime during a song no matter what key it is in. This is just how a piece is written. It's just a chord. Nothing to do with tuning. It's just a chord.

A chord is three or more notes played together at the same time.

A note is one note at a time.

Whoever told you that rock music was played in E minor has no clue what they are doing. Music, including rock, emo, metal, etc is played with many chords including things like A flat augmented, and F 7 sub 3. All sounds strange right now huh? This is why you have to know where each note is on the guitar first, other wise it's all going to be a foreign language.

I totally get the wanting to play electric, but  it's much cooler to be able to actually PLAY a solo, than just strum a chord so please stick with the lessons and learn your instrument. You'll be able to kick *** then

Best!