I, IV & V Help understanding

[Lonnie]

Hello everyone, I have some sort of mental block going on and would be most grateful if anyone could break this down for me. I’ve plunked around with the guitar for years. Mostly a 3-chord wonder without timing. 😬😂.

Since I’m retired I have recently dedicated myself to going back and starting from scratch and I’m having a blast. Currently working on learning and understanding the pentatonic scale. Had a bit of a breakthrough yesterday. Still have a long way to go but It was fun putting some licks to the g chord.

** now the issues; I keep reading I can take another leap forward by finding and playing the I, IV and V. I’m a little embarrassed but I have searched but am unable to understand. Could someone dumb this down for me? Say for a c chord or g and how it ties together with the pentatonic scale.
Thanks,
Lonnie

[reeve21]

Lonnie, welcome to the AGF! This place is a great resource for learning about all things guitar including a little bit of theory.

What you are referring to is often called the blues progression, usually but not always in 12 bars. So if you are in the key of C the one chord is C, the four chord is four letters in the alphabet above or F and the 5 chord is G. If you play the C minor pentatonic scale (You make it minor by flatting the third note in the scale, in this case the E) over any of those chords it Will sound good.

Enjoy your 🎸

[Nama Ensou]

I know you want to know how to work with the pentatonic scale, but just for a moment going to the C Maj. scale so you can see where the I IV and V come from, or as I've written here 1 4 5, or again in this case C F G.

To play pentatonic scales over the top of this progression you can experiment with playing first in C and then A, which will give a totally different flavoring, as will later on adding in the scale intervals missing in the pentatonics.

1 = C
2 = D
3 = E
4 = F
5 = G
6 = A
7 = B

[Tahitijack]

The beautiful part of I IV V is that if someone calls it out in D , not C, you simply move everything up starting with D in the one position G in the IV and A in the V. It's amazing how many songs have been written in this basic set of chords. Play on!

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Lonnie

Hello everyone, I have some sort of mental block going on and would be most grateful if anyone could break this down for me. I’ve plunked around with the guitar for years. Mostly a 3-chord wonder without timing. ����.

Since I’m retired I have recently dedicated myself to going back and starting from scratch and I’m having a blast. Currently working on learning and understanding the pentatonic scale. Had a bit of a breakthrough yesterday. Still have a long way to go but It was fun putting some licks to the g chord.

** now the issues; I keep reading I can take another leap forward by finding and playing the I, IV and V. I’m a little embarrassed but I have searched but am unable to understand. Could someone dumb this down for me? Say for a c chord or g and how it ties together with the pentatonic scale.
Thanks,
Lonnie

I, IV and V are just the three primary chords in a key.

So it would be C, F and G in C major. Or A, D and E in A major. E, A and B in E major. And so on.

Those three chords contain all 7 notes of the scale between them, which is why they are such a basic factor in songs.

They link with the pentatonic scale - or rather pentatonic scales link with them - in three ways:

1. Blues. This is where you use the minor pentatonic of the key over all three chords. So in key of A major, you would use the A minor pentatonic scale (A C D E G) on the A, D and E chords. There are clashes - notes in the scale which are not in the chords, and vice versa - but that's what the blues is all about.

2. Gospel/soul. This is not a common application but worth experimenting with. This is the major pentatonic of the key over all the chords. In key of A major, therefore, you'd use the A major pentatonic scale (A B C# E F#) on all the chords. It fits the A chord perfectly, sounds very sweet on the D chord, and just causes one clash on the E (the A note against the G#), which is not a huge problem.

3. What you might call "basic jazz", or indeed basic country, pop or rock. This is "following the changes", by using the pentatonic of each chord. So, A major pent on the A chord, D major pent on the D, E major pent on the E. This sounds good all the way, no clashes. It even works on the minor chords in the key, because it's the same three pentatonic scales.
Here they are for key of A major (scale = A B C# D E F# G#):

A chord (I) = A C# E. A major pent = A B C# E F#
D chord (IV) = D F# A. D major pent = D E F# A B
E chord (V) = E G# B. E major pent = E F# G# B C#
F#m chord (vi) = F# A C#. F# minor pent = F# A B C# E
Bm chord (ii) = B D F#. B minor pent = B D E F# A
C#m chord (iii) = C# E G#. C# minor pent = C# E F# G# B

Notice it all adds up to the A major scale, and each minor pent is the same 5 notes as one of the major pents (A=F#m, D=Bm, E=C#m).
This might look complicated, but it's the first stage on the way to understanding how to play a musical solo which follows the chord changes. Each pent is only one note different from one of the others, and each one contains the 3 notes in the chord, and 2 other notes which sound good.
The remaining 2 scale notes in each case (from the full major scale) don't sound wrong, but are more tense or expressive, and the pentatonics will sound good when just playing them at random, where the whole scale won't necessarily.

Just to make your head explode if it isn't already ... that's only for major keys! Minor keys behave a little differently - much the same in some ways, but with one or two common differences.

[Lonnie]

Hey folks, thank you so much. As I suspected it looks like I was making it much harder than I needed.

I will stare at all these kind responses some more but I think I have it.

Thanks to everyone that replied!

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by JonPR

I, IV and V are just the three primary chords in a key.

Or A, D and E in E major.

Hi Jon
I'm thinking you meant A, D and E in key of A major.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi Jon
I'm thinking you meant A, D and E in key of A major.

Oops! Well spotted.... Let me fix that....

[Mr. Jelly]

I don't know if this will help but for educational purposes look at a piano keyboard. Find middle C. The key of C are the white keys as no black keys are used in C. I learned the term tone, tone, smi-tone, tone, tone, tone. Go up a semi-tone and it starts over again. You may say for a guitar fret board step, step, half-step etc.

[DCCougar]

Originally Posted by Lonnie

...Currently working on learning and understanding the pentatonic scale.

Guitarists talk about this a lot. I've played music for 60+ years, mainly on keys, and maybe I'm missing something, but "pentatonic" was NOT something that ever came up. A scale was always something based on ABCDEFG. That's not too tough, is it? Of course, depending on where you start (what key you're in), say DEFGABC, you may have to play the sharp or flat of one of those "white keys," and obviously a major or minor key means you flatten a particular note, or not. But the "rule" for a major scale is just (in terms of steps) "whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half."

But really, I, IV, V just refers to the major chords generated from the first, fourth, and fifth notes in the major scale of whatever key you're playing in. Like me, you probably play in the key of G a lot, starting and ending on a G chord. So the G major scale is just GABCDEF. (Actually, the F is sharped.) Note the fourth and fifth notes in that scale are C and D. You say you're a 3-chord wonder, you're probably already playing I, IV, V with G, C, D chords. (If you want to advance to a 4-chord wonder, just throw in an Eminor chord -- another easy guitar chord. There are probably a zillion songs with the chord progression G, Em, C, D.)

Anyway, hope that helped!

[TBman]

The only progression I really enjoyed improvising the pentatonic with was E7 A7 and B7. You could go on for days.....

[KevWind]

There has lots of good information posted

As someone who played guitar for 47 years and knowing very little theory
let me see If can simplify it even further

As noted. I -IV- V or 1-4-5 is chord progression
pentatonic is a scale (single note progression)

As others have noted ( the at first confusing part is) The chord numbering system is based on the sequential note numbers (1-2-3-4-5-6-7 ). of the major scale and based on the first note of the scale which is also first chord in the progression and is also the Key of the song

Again the 1 is the first note in the scale, is the first chord in the progression, and is the Key of song

So for example as Mr Cougar said for a song in the Key of G major ----G is the first note (root note) of the G major scale ,,, and the G chord is the first chord in the progression and then C is 4th chord and D is the 5th chord . GABCDEF.

This by itself does not really relate to the pentatonic scale per se except ::

The beauty of the pentatonic scale (especially to start off for playing leads and riffs is ). you only have to know the Key of song and then the Key (root) note becomes the first note of the pentatonic pattern.... AND you only have to remember the pattern for 5 notes (not 7)

[merlin666]

So if there are seven notes in the major and minor scales, which two are omitted to get a pentatonic scale?

[Aspiring]

For me in my learning the big part that helped click with all this was using the theory to identify patterns and how to use them on the fret board.

It also then helps learning songs more because you can then do things like find a substitute quickly that is easier for you to play or also recognize the patterns so thinking of what you are playing as that rather than some random fret number on some random string.

It also clicked with moving to thinking in intervals. Eg I know that the same fret but one string over is a major 4th away for most strings most tunings.

Which means if you know what chord shape has the roots at this positions you can find your I and IV chords.

You don't usually see chromatic playing in a song so practicing finding your roots thirds fourths fifths and sevenths and moving back and forth between those rather than playing a full scale has helped me a lot more than just playing a scale.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by merlin666

So if there are seven notes in the major and minor scales, which two are omitted to get a pentatonic scale?

It's my understanding in a minor pentatonic it's the 2nd and the 6th interval
And in a major pentatonic the 4th and the 7th
But again the beauty is as long as you know the key of the song and pentatonic pattern position sequence, that will automatically leave out the two notes