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How To Know Which Minor Chords To Play In A Song

By Mike Hayes | August 23, 2010

Recently I received a great question from one of my online
subscribers since it’s typical of the type of questions I receive
regularly I thought the answer might be helpful to other
guitarists.

Here’s the question: “In A Song, I know that you play the 1,4,5
chords, but what if there are also minor chords in the song, how
do I know which minor chords to play?”

The best way to answer this is to understand how chords work, the
majority of guitarists learn chords in one of the following ways:

(a) a friend shows them a few chord shapes on the guitar

(b) they learn their chords from a guitar chord book

(c) they play chords form TAB but don’t know the names of the
chords they are playing (usually they don’t even know they are
playing chords)

or …

(d) the guitarists spends endless hours memorizing chord
construction formulas e.g., major: 1-3-5; minor 1-b3-5;
augmented: 1-3-#5 etc.

While all these methods teach you what to play the guitarist
never learns which chords work together and why; take for example
the guy or girl with the chord book, it doesn’t matter how many
chord shapes they learn if they don’t know which chords go
together and why.

So what is the best way to learn about chords?

By studying the language of music.

Step 1: Chord families – chords are not isolated groups of notes
they are created from scales; there are different types of chords
e.g., three note chords (triads); four note chords (scaletone
seventh chords) etc.

Generally the most common chord structures are created by
stacking the notes of a scale in thirds.

Here is an example of a chord family (triadic version) derived
from the key of G.

G scale: G – A – B – C – D – E – F# – G

Chord family key of G:

G – Am – Bm – C – D – Em – F#dim – G

Step 2: Identify the 1,4,5 chords – Many popular songs can be
reduced harmonically to three chords, most likely you have heard
about three chord tunes, essentially most three chord tunes
consist of the 1,4 and 5 chords (musicians call these chords the
primary chords).

Primary chords in the key of G:

1 = G

4 = C

5 = D

I arrived at this answer by assigning a number to each chord in
the key of G.

Like this

1 = G

2 = Am

3 = Bm

4 = C

5 = D

6 = Em

7 = F#dim

8 = G

Step 3: Identifying which minor chords to play in a song

(a) if a song has four chords there is a very strong chance the
fourth chord will be a minor chord, the problem is which minor
chord!

The answer here is simple it’s chord 6 in the chord family; chord
six is the relative minor to chord one.

What that means is that chord six represents a sound that is the
exact opposite of chord one; if you were to describe the sound of
chord one as ‘bright’ you would possibly describe the sound of
chord six as ‘dull’; if you were to describe the sound of chord
one as ‘happy’ you would might describe the sound of chord six as
’sad’.

Chord six is the most closely related chord to chord one however,
it has a chord texture ( or musical mood)exactly the opposite to
chord one.

(b) if you are searching for a minor chord that goes before chord
five it’s almost always chord two.

(c) if you have tried the 1-6-4-5 progression and you are not
convinced it’s 100% correct for your particular musical situation
try the 1-3-4-5 progression.

Bonus tip: One other chord progression that pops up quite often
is another variation of the 1-6-4-5.

Try this 1-6-2-5 and compare the musical ‘mood’ of this
progression to the 1-6-4-5 chances are it will be the progression
you are looking for.

Topics: Beginner Guitar Lesson, Guitar Chords | No Comments »

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