I thought it would be fun to share a few of my favorites with you and, hopefully, get you to share a few of your favorites with me.

So, here they are, in no particular order; my 5 favorite chords:

1. F#Maj7#11

For me, at least, this was the chord heard ’round the world. It’s the opening chord of Rush’s “Hemispheres” and completely knocked me on my ass the first time I heard it. There’s nothing overly special about it, but the added #11 from the open B string just locks this chord into sexyville for me.


2. Am7add11

One of my new favorites, I’ve been using this chord a lot in writing material for the new Din Within CD. This is a great chord to vamp with and move up and down the neck for different sounds.


3. CMaj9#11

I call this the “Wayne Krantz” chord. It’s the only chord I’ve heard him play that I can figure out. Put
just a little bit of gain on your amp, turn your volume pot down a smidge, and let this chord rip!


4. Min9/Maj7

This is a general-utility comping chord. If you play it with your pinky on the 9th scale degree, it’s a great minor 9th chord voicing (pinky on the ‘B’ note sounds great as an Am9 chord). If it’s played on the 7th scale degree, it’s also a great Maj7 chord (pinky on the ‘B’ note sounds great as a CMaj7 chord).


5. Ab 6/9

Not sure why I like the sound of this chord in Ab more than any other key, but that’s how I roll.

Alright, so in this lesson I’m going to talk about chords. Chords are another very important part of music, obviously. As per usual, we’ll discuss chords using the C Major scale.

Building Triads

To build chords off each scale degree, all you really have to do is start on the first note and build chords by stacking every other note on top of each other. In the beginning we’re going to work with triads. A “triad” is a three-note chord.

Okay, starting on the note ‘C’ we’re going to stack every other note; so we’ll skip the next note ‘D’ and stack the E. Then we’ll skip the next note ‘F’ and stack the ‘G’. This gives us C, E, G:

This is known as a C triad. We’ll figure out what kind of C triad it is in a minute. First, we want to continue building triads off of each note of the scale. Starting on ‘D’ will give us D, F, and A:

Going through all the rest of the triads will look like this:

Triads galore! We now have all of the triads associated with the C Major scale. Try playing them on your guitar and hear how they sound. They are all technically the key of C Major, but each chord has a distinct sound.

Triad Types

We now need to figure out what type of chord each triad is (major, minor, augmented, diminished, etc…). To do this we have to go back to my lesson on intervals. (If you need a refresher, go and read the intervals article now.)

If we analyze the intervallic relationships between each note, we know that C to E is a major third, and E to G is a minor third. This relationship (major third followed by minor third) is known as a major triad. So, the above chord is a C Major triad.

Try the same thing with D:

The intervallic relationship of this triad is a minor third followed by a major third. This is known as a minor chord. So, the above chord is a D minor chord.

• A triad with a major third followed by a major third is known as an augmented triad.
• A triad with a minor third followed by another minor third is known as a diminished triad.

If we go back to all of the triads built from the C Major scale, we can now analyze each chord and figure out what type of triad each one is.

Roman Numerals

So within a C Major scale we have three major triads, three minor triads, and one diminished triad. We’re going to hearken back to the days of yore once again and assign each one of these triads a roman numeral. This helps us to quickly determine what chord we are talking about. Where this really comes in handy is when playing jazz. Quite often you’ll find situations where jazz songs (called “standards”) will be played in different keys. Perhaps one person will like to play On Green Dolphin Street in C, but someone else will play it in Eb. These situations – which happen all the time – make it very difficult to memorize tunes. Because of this, many people will memorize a tune according to the roman numerals associated with each chord, rather than the chord name. This way you only have to learn the song once and apply it to any key.

Staring on the first chord we’ll assign roman numerals to each scale degree/chord:

Notice that some of the roman numerals are uppercase, and some are lowercase. This is the music theory way of telling the player what type of chord it is.

• Uppercase numerals represent major chords.
• Lowercase numerals represent minor chords.
• Lowercase numerals with a small circle after it represent a diminished chord.
• Augmented chords (not shown here) will be an uppercase numeral with a small plus sign (+) after it.

Once you’re used to seeing chords represented this way it really makes things very easy. You’ll be memorizing tunes much quicker (though admittedly I’m still working on this one myself).

Seventh Chords (7th Chords)

Do you remember in my intervals article where I was discussing 9th, 11th, and 13th interval degrees? It is with the study of chords that these intervals become most apparent. What we want to do now is build extended chords from the triads and see what we come up with. Using the same skip/stack procedure that we used to build the triads, we want to add one more note to each triad. This will give us “seventh chords.” We call them seventh chords because the top note of the chord is seven scale degrees away from the bottom note (also known as the “root” of the chord). Here are the seventh chords in the C major scale:

As with triads, uppercase and lowercase numerals are used, as are the circle and plus signs to designate diminished and augmented chords, and the number 7 tells us that us that we are dealing with a seventh chord.

Looking at the above seventh chord chart you’ll see “Dom 7” and “½ dim 7.” What is that you ask? Well… “Dom 7” means “Dominant 7th chord” and “½ dim 7” means “half-diminished 7th chord.” For now, keep in mind that a Dominant 7th chord is a major triad with a minor third from the fifth of the chord to the seventh. A ½ diminished 7th chord is a diminished triad with a minor third from the fifth to the seventh. (In jazz circles the ½ diminished chord is known as a “minor 7b5” (minor seven flat five) chord.)

There is also a fully-diminished seventh chord (just called a diminished seventh chord), which are three minor third intervals. There are also many others, but let’s stick with these for now.

Extended Chords

Take each seventh chord and add another interval on top of that – these are ninth chords. For example, a C Major ninth chord is C, E, G, B, D; a D minor ninth chord is D, F, A, C, E. You can do the rest on your own.

11th chords would add a third over the 9th, and 13th chords would add a third over the 11th. 13th chords basically use every note of a particular scale, but stacked in thirds instead of played consecutively as you would when playing a scale.

Phew! That’s a lot of chord stuff to absorb, but you’re now well on your way. Once we start getting into jazz theory and advanced chord structures all of this information will start coming together and we’ll be making some wonderful music.

Enjoy!

Chord Hacks: Blues Chord Comping from Fretterverse on Vimeo.

Let’s start with the most basic of four-string chords, the CMaj7 chord from the 2345 string group. You’ve all seen it before, but for the sake of completeness I’ll show it again:

We’re changing the order of tones around to facilitate the guitar’s tuning – instead of playing C E G B we’re playing C G B E. Same notes, just a different order.

Chord Inversions

And so where do we go from here? If we are playing a piece of music that has a CMaj7 chord for 8 bars, just playing your one stock voicing is going to get very boring, very quickly. To keep the music alive you should probably think about playing different kinds of CMaj7 chords. The easiest way to do that is to play an inversion of the chord you’re currently playing.

To do this, simply start on each note in the chord you’re playing and move that finger up to the next note in the chord:

• C moves up to E
• G moves up to B
• B moves up to C
• E moves up to G

It’s the same exact chord, just played in a different note order and in the 5th position instead of the 3rd. Here is the new CMaj7 chord:

There are two more inversions we can do with this chord on the 2345 string group:

Now, just with the 2345 string group alone, there are four chords you can play instead of just the original CMaj7.

Vary the String Groups

This can be easily repeated with both the 1234 and 3456 string groups. 3456 will most likely sound a bit too muddy if you are playing with a group (as opposed to playing solo or backing up a singer or solo instrument). The fun, however, is what you come up with when you work through some of the other string groups. Groups 1235 and 2346 start to create more interesting sounds although they are still pretty tame. It’s when you get into string groups such as 1245, 2356, 1346, etc… that things get truly interesting. Here are the CMaj7 chords from the 2356 string group:

Try playing them yourself and see how they sound. You’re probably going to need to use the fingers of your right hand to pluck the chord rather than strumming with a pick, and you may want to try it with a clean tone first to hear all of the notes and their intervallic relationships.

Putting it Into Practice

To go a bit further with the example, I’m going to take the first 8 bars of the jazz standard “All the Things You Are” (which I’ve been exploring more deeply in my own practice) and create a very simple chord melody using the 1245 string group. The goal here is not to create a masterpiece of music, but to explore the different chord voicings and inversions that are available to me. I’m going to put a chord on virtually every melody note, which doesn’t necessarily sound great, but maximizes my tonal possibilities. First, a lead sheet of the first 8 bars:

Now, the simple chord melody of the 1245 string group (click image for larger view):

Notice that in some places I had to shift the chord up or down an octave in order to accommodate the guitar’s range. This can obviously be modified in a “real” setting by simply varying the string groups you use – no one says you have to play everything in just one group, after all!

Move the Melody

To make things even more interesting, take the melody out of the top string (in this case, the high E string) and play it on all of the other strings. In essence you are building four different chord melodies for each string group. We just did the first one with the melody on the E string; now we will do the same thing with the melody on the B, D, and A strings. It may be hard to hear the melody at first, especially on the B and D strings, so it might help to sing along with the melody to help it stand out.

You should also try to see if you can get the melody string to stand out so its not overshadowed by the volume of the higher strings. This is a challenge, but worth the effort.

Without further adieu, here is the second chord melody with the melody on the B string (click image for larger view):

I’ve given you two, and there are two more. I wondering if perhaps you should try to figure them out on your own? (hint, hint)

Experiment, Play, and Have Fun

I have written lots of song ideas using different chord groups, spiced up some monotonous song ideas, and even brought some new life to old cover songs during jam sessions. It’s not just a question of “learning tons of chords” and arbitrarily throwing them into a song just for the sake of variety. It’s about listening to what’s going on around you and trying to fill in the gaps where appropriate.

Homework?

I am allowed to give homework on a blog? Well, I’m going to anyway. Go to the second 8 bars of All The Things You Are and work out a chord melody using the 1245 string group. Put the melody in all voices (so you’ll be working on four chord melodies) and see what you come up with. Here are the next 8 bars:

You can probably stop at bar 7 unless, of course, you want to do more than just the next 8 bars. I don’t grade on a curve, and extra credit is always acceptable.

Have Fun!

I’ll be honest, this stuff isn’t easy, at least not for me. Sometimes it takes me a VERY long time to get them down. I’ll give you a piece of advice: Don’t spend all of your time writing these out in hopes to be able to sightread them later. If you want to write them out, fine, but you should spend the majority of your time learning them on your guitar and not notating them on paper; that method tends to distract from the learning process.

Most importantly, have fun with it! This is guitar playing after all, the greatest hobby around, so enjoy the time you spend learning and jamming!