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The Powerful Cure for Lame chords on Guitar (it’s easy)

By Mike Hayes | June 2, 2010

From a guitar player’s point of view it’s a big achievement just
to get the chords sounding clear without any buzzy or blocked
notes, however from the listener’s perspective an awful lot of
what the average guitar player strums is just plain boring.

So what do we do, we seem to be playing the correct chord shapes
we’ve even checked that the chords are correct with the sheet
music but somehow our guitar doesn’t sound as exciting as the
recorded version, what could be the problem?

Actually, the solution is often as simple as adding as few
carefully selected passing chords that will give the music a
sense of movement and surprise.

We’ll begin today’s project with the common “E7″ chord; what we
are setting out to achieve is to create a series of passing or
“walking” chords that we can insert in between various inversions
of the “E7″ all over the guitar fingerboard if we are successful
our chord will have a roaming, restless, transparent quality.

Step 1: Identify the parent scale of the chord.

Chords are not isolated groups of notes rather they are created
from scales, the conventional method is to stack the notes of a
scale on top of each other (layer cake fashion); a good way to
think about music is that melodies, single notes played
consecutively are musical horizontal structures whereas chords
are musical vertical structures.

Dominant 7th chords are derived by stacking or layering the fifth
note of a scale until you have a total of four notes. Let’s see
which scale produces the E7 chord.

Scaletone seventh (four note) chords created from the following
scales would be …

CMaj7 – Dm7 – Em7 – FMaj7 – G7 – Am7 – Bdim – CMaj7

GMaj7 – Am7 – Bm7 – CMaj7 – D7 – Em7 – F#dim – GMaj7

DMaj7 – Em7 – F#m7 – GMaj7 – A7 – Bm7 – C#dim – DMaj7

AMaj7 – Bm7 – C#m7 – DMaj7 – E7 – F#m7 – G#dim – AMaj7 etc.,

Can you spot the E7 chord?

It’s the fifth chord created from the scale of “A”, the “E7″
indicated as []

AMaj7 – Bm7 – C#m7 – DMaj7 – [E7] – F#m7 – G#dim – AMaj7

Taking this information across to the guitar fretboard we begin
with the standard garden variety “E7″ in open position.

E7
–0—-
–0—-
–1—-
–0—-
–2—-
–0—-

Step 2: Using the linear scale concept to move existing chord
tones up until they arrive at the next correct scale tone.

Since the “E7″ chord was produced from the scale “A” therefore
the open strings E = 1st string, B = 2nd string, D = fourth
string and E = sixth string can all be played regardless of
whatever chord shape is being created by the guitarist’s fingers.

The concept is that any notes that are in the correct scale can
be played constantly to produce a smooth, transparent, sparkling
chord sound.

By linear scales I mean playing the scale along the string
instead of across the strings.

Here’s the A scale to study.

Scale of A : A – B – C# – D – E – F# – G# – A

Beginning on the first fret, third string I would play all the
notes of the “A” scale along the third string as follows:

Linear scale, string three (numbers refer to fret numbers on the
third string)

G# = 1
A = 2
B = 4
C# = 6
D = 7
E = 9
F# = 11
G# = 13

When playing the “A” major scale beginning on the note G# then
preceding to play all the notes of the “A” scale until we reach
the next G# we actually produce a scale called the Locrian mode
in this instance you would be playing the G# Locrian mode.

We started on the G# because that’s where our finger was placed
on the third string in our original “E7″ shape.

Likewise we would create another liner scale on the fifth string
in the key of “A” beginning on the note “B” (where our finger is
placed on that string with the standard “E7″ chord).

Like this …

linear scale, string five (numbers refer to fret numbers on the
fifth string)

B = 2
C# = 4
D = 5
E = 7
F# = 9
G# = 11
A = 12
B = 14

This scale would be called the B Dorian mode.

Step 3: create new chord shapes for walking chords

“walking chord for “E7″

–0—-
–0—-
–2—-
–0—-
–4—-
–0—-

How did I arrive at this shape?

(a) remember all open strings are constant for “E7″

(b) I used the second note in the linear scale on the third
string A = 2nd fret and the second note of the linear scale on
the fifth string C# = 4

The really cool thing about working out your chords this way is
that you can continue all the way up the fingerboard using the
linear scales to produce either other versions of “E7″ chords or
passing chords that connect one “E7″ to the next!

Here’s the first three to get you started.

E7

–0—-
–0—-
–1—-
–0—-
–2—-
–0—-

“walking chord for “E7″

–0—-
–0—-
–2—-
–0—-
–4—-
–0—-

E7

–0—-
–0—-
–4—-
–0—-
–5—-
–0—-

Q. How did I work out which chord is “E7″ and which one is the
connecting chord?

A. Easy the notes of the “E7″ chord are E – G# – B – D at any
point in our linear scale where the shapes (including open
strings) contain all the notes of the “E7″ we have an “E7″
chord any other groups of notes result in shapes that are
“connecting” or “passing” chords.

Now it’s over to you to try these new chords on your guitar.

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

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