As someone who has spent too much time on music theory and not nearly enough time on learning to play songs, I'd congratulate you for doing this in the right order.
I've mostly learned music theory by a haphazard procedure of following my interests, which I would not recommend. :p
But one concept that really opened my eyes when I was learning music theory (from the perspective of a not-so-good guitar player) was how "everything" can be built from a scale, or more precisely -- a pattern for spacing a set of notes.
So, C major scale:
C D E F G A B C
half tones between 3rd/4th notes and 7th/8th notes. whole tones everywhere else. Begin with any other note, and follow that pattern, and you have the major scale for that root note:
D E F# G A B C# D
G A B C D E F# G
F G A Bb C D E F
Write any major scale vertically, then next to it rewrite it beginning with the 3rd note then again with the 5th note. Read it horizontally and you have the primary chords in the key for that scale
CEG c major
DFA d minor
EGB e minor
FAC f major
GBD g major
ACE a minor
BDF b minor flat 5 (i think... was always fuzzy on this one)
Of those chords, the famous "3 chords" for a folk/blues/rock song will be the 1st, 4th, and 5th (the 3 majors) with the 6th (relative minor) or sometimes the 2nd or 3rd thrown in fairly often as an extra or replacement.
Write another vertical column there starting on the 7th note and you will get the notes in the 7th chords for the key (although rock/blues traditionally will use some variations on those).
"Rotate" that list to begin with a note other than C and you are defining a new mode (and there is one for each possible starting note). Begin with A and you have the Aelion mode (aka A Minor).
The pentatonic scales are just subsets of this scale (e.g., minor pentatonic is the minor scale without the 2nd and 6th notes, so ABCDEFGA becomes ACDEGA)
I've mostly learned music theory by a haphazard procedure of following my interests, which I would not recommend. :p
But one concept that really opened my eyes when I was learning music theory (from the perspective of a not-so-good guitar player) was how "everything" can be built from a scale, or more precisely -- a pattern for spacing a set of notes.
So, C major scale:
C D E F G A B C
half tones between 3rd/4th notes and 7th/8th notes. whole tones everywhere else. Begin with any other note, and follow that pattern, and you have the major scale for that root note:
D E F# G A B C# D
G A B C D E F# G
F G A Bb C D E F
Write any major scale vertically, then next to it rewrite it beginning with the 3rd note then again with the 5th note. Read it horizontally and you have the primary chords in the key for that scale
CEG c major
DFA d minor
EGB e minor
FAC f major
GBD g major
ACE a minor
BDF b minor flat 5 (i think... was always fuzzy on this one)
Of those chords, the famous "3 chords" for a folk/blues/rock song will be the 1st, 4th, and 5th (the 3 majors) with the 6th (relative minor) or sometimes the 2nd or 3rd thrown in fairly often as an extra or replacement.
Write another vertical column there starting on the 7th note and you will get the notes in the 7th chords for the key (although rock/blues traditionally will use some variations on those).
"Rotate" that list to begin with a note other than C and you are defining a new mode (and there is one for each possible starting note). Begin with A and you have the Aelion mode (aka A Minor).
The pentatonic scales are just subsets of this scale (e.g., minor pentatonic is the minor scale without the 2nd and 6th notes, so ABCDEFGA becomes ACDEGA)