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Easy Beginner Guitar Lessons- My first steps to learning minor chords on the guitar

By Mike Hayes | August 18, 2009

There’s a real art to playing rhythm guitar, I don’t mean playing
a few messy chords in a disorganized group; playing good rhythm
requires the ability to ‘leave out the un-necessary notes so the
important notes can be heard’.

If you are a frustrated guitarist who has been trying to learn
chords on the guitar you will no doubt be pleased to learn that
playing chords doesn’t have to be complicated and physically
demanding.

Minor chords can be a wonderful chord texture to have at your
disposal if you are a songwriter or advancing guitarist. Since
‘our ear has a memory be no eyes’, you can change the whole feel
of a song just by changing a major chord to it’s relative minor.

Here is an example of substituting a minor chord in place of an
existing major chord:

Our original progression …

G /// | C /// | D /// | G /// ||

becomes …

Em /// | C /// | D /// | Em /// ||

If you play the two progressions you will notice how the sound of the Em chord changes the emotion of the chord sequence.

What we did here was substitute the G major chord with it’s
relative minor Em.

The relative minor chord can be found by playing a bass note
three frets lower than the major chord you want to substitute.

For example: Using an open G major chord, we move the G note on the six string, third fret back three frets … now the new bass note is an open E note; therefore the relative minor chord for G major is E minor.

Our next project is to learn how to spell all the minor chords.

Beginning with the key of ‘C’ major we will learn how to spell a
C minor chord.

Step 1. Using notes from the C major scale:

C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C

Step 2. Apply the 1-b3-5 formula to create the minor chord.

In this instance we would use the first, flatted third and fifth
notes of the C major scale to build our C minor chord.

Cm = C, Eb, G

Applying this same process to the other keys we would arrive at
the following conclusions …

Minor chords in the sharp keys:

Gm = G, Bb, D
Dm = D, F, A
Am = A, C, E
Em = E, G, B
Bm = B, D, F#
F#m = F#, A, C#
C#m = C#, E, G#

Important: In a situation where the note that has to be flattened is a sharp; the flat cancels the sharp out, therefore the note is played as a natural.

Here’s a sample in the key of D:

D major scale = D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D applying the 1-b3-5 minor formula to this scale would result in the F# being canceled out by the flattened third rule therefore we would spell D minor D-F-A

Applying this concept to the flat keys we would arrive at the
following minor chords.

Fm = F, Ab, C
Bbm = Bb, Db, F
Ebm = Eb, Gb, Bb
Abm = Ab, Cb, Eb
Dbm = Db, Fb, Ab

It can be confusing when you come across a Cb or a Fb; Cb is the same pitch as the note B; whilst Fb is the same pitch as the note E.

I know you will enjoy the minor chord flavor; try substituting some of your major chord sounds with your new minor chords and  have fun playing your guitar.

And now I’d like to invite you to get free access to my “How To
Remember 1,000 Songs” eCourse. You can download the course for
free at: http://www.guitarcoaching.com

From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar
System

http://www.GuitarCoaching.com
http://AdvancingGuitaristProgram.com

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