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The Powerful Cure For The Struggle To Play Chords (it’s easy)

By Mike Hayes | May 29, 2010

Have you practiced open chords and studied your bar chords but
still can’t get that sound on the recordings? Do you need another
type of guitar, more practice or a different brand of amp?
Actually all you need to do is play the same style of chords as
the players on the recordings!

Guitar players spend an amazing amount of time searching for the
“lost chord”, you know the one that got away; the elusive sound
that they can get close to but never quite match. I have watched
and listened to many guitarists that sound quite good when they
play along with a recording (the louder the recording the better
they sound) they kid themselves that they are making the same
sound as the recording, but if you ever hear them without the
karaoke style background the performance is much less
spectacular.

It’s not “something they do in the studio” that makes the guitar
sound that good, it’s just a different way of playing standard
chords, that’s why even though a newbie guitar player who is
playing along with a recording may be playing the correct chord,
in the correct key the only thing they are not correctly
duplicating is the exact chord voicing as the guitarist on the
recording.

Since many rhythm guitar “tricks of the trade” remain as “trade
secrets” behind closed studio doors it’s rare for the average
player to discover how to create those sounds … unless they
know someone who works in the recording studios creating those
mysterious sounds, since I have spent the last 30 years on “the
other side of the glass” I should be able to shed a little light
on this aspect of guitar playing.

The key of “E” is a very popular key for guitar players to
jam in so in this article I’ll focus on creating interesting
professional sounding chords that are easy to play in the key of
“E”.

The idea is to use open strings to give the guitar a crisp,
clear, transparent quality so the rhythm guitar can blend
effortlessly with the rhythm section and not distract from the
vocals or featured instrumentalist.

By selecting the correct open strings and using these strings as
“done strings” that are played over each chord you produce a very
smooth rhythm guitar style that is a feature of all commercially
produced recordings regardless of style.

Which open strings? The answer is found by selecting the first
and fifth notes of the key you are playing in, since we are
playing in the key of “E” we should first refer to the E major
scale.

E Major scale

E – F# – G# – A – B – C# – D# – E

Next we select the first and fifth notes of that scale indicated
as [].

[E] – F# – G# – A – [B] – C# – D# – E

Moving across to the guitar we find that we could play the first
string open (E); and the second string open(B); against all the
chords in the key of E.

Important: drone notes work best when they are voiced high in the
chord, on the first couple of strings works best for most
situations.

The key of E major produces the following set of chords.

E – F#m – G#m – A – B – C#m – D#dim – E

Our next project is to create chord shapes where we can play the
open first and second strings over all the chords listed above.

We already have the two notes ‘E’ and ‘B’ present with the
standard E shape chord so there is nothing to change in our first
shape.

E
–0—-
–0—-
–1—-
–2—-
–2—-
–0—-

F#m

–0—-
–0—-
–2—-
–4—-
–4—-
–x—-

G#m

–0—-
–0—-
–4—-
–6—-
–6—-
–x—-

A

–0—-
–0—-
–6—-
–7—-
–7—-
–x—-

B

–0—-
–0—-
–8—-
–9—-
–9—-
–x—-

C#m

–0—-
–0—-
–9—-
–11—-
–11—-
–x—-

D#dim

–0—-
–0—-
–11—-
–13—-
–12—-
–x—-

E

–0—-
–0—-
–13—-
–14—-
–14—-
–x—-

You may not be able to reach all the chords listed here, it will
depend on the style of guitar that you are playing, guitarists
with cutaway style guitars will find these shapes quite
acceptable, however if some of the higher chords are difficult to
play on your guitar simply convert other chord shapes you already
know to accommodate your particular musical application.

Here is two alternate versions of the “A” and “B” chords for you
to try.

A

–0—-
–0—-
–2—-
–2—-
–0—-
–x—-

B

–0—-
–0—-
–4—-
–4—-
–2—-
–x—-

The trick is to think about playing chords differently and always
look for opportunities to play open strings in your chord playing
whenever you get the chance to play rhythm guitar.

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

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