Here’s a good link that goes into more detail. Basically, you assign the “key” of the song the value of 1, so let’s say a song is in the key of E then you would say the E chord is the 1. (Typically they use Roman numerals so it would be the I chord). If the next chord is an A, that would be considered a IV chord, because going from E to A you would go E, F, G, A, or 1, 2, 3, 4.
This is super useful because songs will often have the same chord structure but be in different keys. For instance, a typical I-IV-V blues song in the key of E would use the chords E, A, and B - but let’s say you’re jamming in the key of G and you want to use this progression. By knowing the intervals you can set G as the I and then count up to figure out that C is the IV and D the V.
Getting a bit more advanced, every chord is made up of specific intervals, so once you get familiar with how each interval “feels” you can kind of just make up your own chords and solo around the fretboard. Like, an E major chord consists of the 1-3-5 notes E, G#, and B. To make a minor chord, you flatten the 3rd and would play G instead of G#. But if you’re soloing and you want to play an E minor riff, you might have easy access to a few different G notes depending on where you are on the neck, e.g. playing an open G string, the 5th fret on the D string, or the 3rd fret on an E string. If you just memorize chord shapes (which I did for years) you’d never know this, but once you know intervals you can figure all this out for ANY chord as long as you know at least one note and it’s interval value.
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Here’s a good link that goes into more detail. Basically, you assign the “key” of the song the value of 1, so let’s say a song is in the key of E then you would say the E chord is the 1. (Typically they use Roman numerals so it would be the I chord). If the next chord is an A, that would be considered a IV chord, because going from E to A you would go E, F, G, A, or 1, 2, 3, 4.
This is super useful because songs will often have the same chord structure but be in different keys. For instance, a typical I-IV-V blues song in the key of E would use the chords E, A, and B - but let’s say you’re jamming in the key of G and you want to use this progression. By knowing the intervals you can set G as the I and then count up to figure out that C is the IV and D the V.
Getting a bit more advanced, every chord is made up of specific intervals, so once you get familiar with how each interval “feels” you can kind of just make up your own chords and solo around the fretboard. Like, an E major chord consists of the 1-3-5 notes E, G#, and B. To make a minor chord, you flatten the 3rd and would play G instead of G#. But if you’re soloing and you want to play an E minor riff, you might have easy access to a few different G notes depending on where you are on the neck, e.g. playing an open G string, the 5th fret on the D string, or the 3rd fret on an E string. If you just memorize chord shapes (which I did for years) you’d never know this, but once you know intervals you can figure all this out for ANY chord as long as you know at least one note and it’s interval value.
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