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Chord "colors" and how to use them, Part 2

8/24/2020

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Now it’s time to take a closer look at those notes you can add to a chord to add some “color.” Sure, straight Major and minor chords sound just fine as they are, but after a while you may find that they sound kind of predictable and perhaps even a bit boring. In Part One of this discussion of chord colors I used the examples of adding the 6th and/or the 9thabove the root of the chord to add some interest. These are extremely common in modern acoustic singer/songwriter songs and I urge you to learn some chord progressions that use them. Something like this (again, using the key of G Major for the example because it’s so common):
 
I chord:  G6   (G, B, D, E)
 
II chord:  Am9  (A, C, E, B)
 
III chord:  Bm9  (B, D, F#, C)
 
IV chord:  C6   (C, E, G, A)
 
V chord:  D6  (D, F#, A, B)
 
VI chord:  Em9  (E, G, B, F#)
 
Ah, but then we come to the VII chord. Remember how last time I said we were going to “do something” to the naturally occurring VII chord, which is diminished? Well, in much of modern acoustic singer/songwriter type music that VII chord is changed ever so slightly to become something called the “flat seven” written as:  bVII. What is it, and why is this done? Because quite frankly I just don’t think many modern acoustic singer/songwriters like the sound of a diminished chord! Jazz players? Another story entirely. The vast majority of jazz tunes use diminished and diminished 7th chords. But not many acoustic singer/songwriters use them (although James Taylor is an example of one who does). In the most basic sense, I think that most players and listeners are most comfortable with the sound of a Major chord. So what writers have done is take the root of that naturally occurring VII chord (diminished) and LOWERED the root by ½ step. The result? A Major chord! Again using the key of G Major for our examples, this means that the VII chord (F#dim) changes into an F Major! So now the scale line triads (chords built of using ONLY notes in the key, except for that bVII chord) looks like this:
 
I:  G Major
 
II: A minor
 
III:  B minor
 
IV:  C Major
 
V:  D Major
 
VI:  A minor
 
VII:  F Major
 
 
Now, by doing just that series (without adding other colors like the 6 and 9) we have inserted one chord, the flat VII that includes a F natural…..NOT an F#, as would be found in the Major Diatonic Scale in G Major. Just that one note in that one chord (F Major) makes that chord sound “different” and certainly interesting compared to the predictability of straight scale-line chords. Try this. Play the I – IV – V – I progression in G Major  (G, C, D, G). Sounds really familiar, doesn’t it? And comfortable. Now play the I – IV – bVII – I progression (G, C, F, G). Hear how that F Major demands our attention? That’s because the root of that chord is NOT in the key of G Major. And that, my friends, is what chord “colors” are all about! It is not a radical color because the rest of the chord (A & C) are in the key of G Major but that F natural is certainly…..different. If you want to use the bVII chord in ANY key, just go to the naturally occurring 7thtone in any key, lower that note in ½ step (“flat” it!) and assume that it the “first name” or root of a Major chord. Simple as that!
 
Just how much coloring you want to add to your chords is totally subjective, and that’s where your creativity and how many chances you’re willing to take comes into play. Theoretically, you could add ANY note to ANY chord for color but you would pretty quickly discover that some sound just awful! There is a well-known story about the world premier if Igor Stravinsky’s famous Firebird Suite. Stravinsky was the first major composer to use lots of dissonance in his music (notes that clashed with the key) and the piece was so disturbing to the audience that there was a riot. You probably won’t cause a riot by inserting radical color notes into your chords, but be prepared for a negative reaction by both the listeners and yourself! This brings us to the most important part of understanding the use of “colors” in your chords: Dissonance and resolution.
 
Notes that are very close to each other, say, a half step apart, sound pretty awful to our ears. This is called dissonance. Press down on the 4th fret of your 2nd (B) string, then play your 1st and 2nd strings at the same time. Ooooo, that’s AWFUL! Dissonance occurs when two notes that are very close together are played at the same time. But here’s the cool part. If two letter named notes, say a F# and a G, are separated by some distance, perhaps close to an active, they don’t sound so bad at all. In fact, it is a color that has a lot of interest to our ears and can sound very pleasing. The most common example the Major 7th chord. A GMaj7 is made up of these notes:
 
G  B  D  F#
 
Obviously, when thinking about the note names in order being “circular” – A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, etc. we can see that inside the GMaj7 we have an F# and a G…. a half-step apart, so they should be dissonant, right? But in all the commonly played inversions of GMaj7, there is a wide separation between the G and the F#. So – when “padded” with the other notes in the chord in between you hardly hear the dissonance at all! The point is – inserting a note into a chord that is inherently dissonant when played with the next note in sequence in the key can sound very interesting IF there is some distance between those two notes.
 
But what about a note that really sticks out? One that has the potential to sound just…..wrong. Songwriters have dealt with this by “resolving” that bad or wrong sounding note in the following chord. The best example I know of this is the Beatles classic “In My Life.” Half way through third measure of the song (in the key of G Major), John Lennon who wrote the song goes from a C Major to a C minor. That C minor chord uses an Eb in it, instead of the E natural found in the C Major, which is of course entirely constructed of notes in the key of G Major. For a brief moment, that Eb inside the C minor sounds dark, disturbing….but after only two beats on that chord, John “resolves” that dissonance by changing to the best sounding chord of all, the I chord, which is G Major. Our music brains go…..ahhhhhh……THAT’S better!!! The genius of this is that the resolution is accomplished by only moving inside the chord to the next by a half-step. A G Major chord is composed of these notes:  G,  B,  D.  So what John did over the course of three chords (C Major, C minor, G Major) was only move backwards in half steps: E – the 3rd of the C Major, to Eb – the 3rdof the C minor, to D, which is the 5th of the G Major! That is nothing short of simple genius in popular music and had rarely been heard before in that context.
 
I could cite many other examples of tension and resolution, dissonance resolved by a very small change from one chord to the next. As you explore adding notes to standard Major and minor chords, remember to not lean on your new colors too much; your ears will love the variety but in the end they want to go home again. But don’t let that stop you! Fool around. Add new notes to chords. I’ll bet you’ll find some very interesting sounds and your guitar playing – and your ear – will be better for it!
 
Peace & good music,
Gene
 
 

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Chord "colors" and how to use them, Part One

8/12/2020

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As anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while knows, I am a huge fan of British jazz guitarist Martin Taylor. Not only am I in total awe of his fingerstyle jazz technique but his many videos and instructional materials convey not only his love of jazz but also his wonderful sense of humor. I just watched one in which he accepted some kind of online “challenge” to play and explain a chord. It was a joy to watch and he articulated what I feel about chord construction much better than I can, but I thought I’d give that another go because I really haven’t done a post here in a while that is purely about playing.
 
In order to understand what I’ll be talking about it’s vital that you have a decent knowledge of basic music theory. That is, knowing what a Major Diatonic scale is and how to play one. It’s also required that you know the basics of how the two most import chord families are constructed, Major and minor. Here’s how those two elements go if you don’t know already.
 
A Major Diatonic scale, that most of us know as the do-re-mi type of scale is constructed as follows:
 
Root note (the starting point), followed by the next note a whole step away, next note a whole step away, next note a half-step away, next note a whole step away, next note a whole step away, next note a whole step away, last note to Root (an octave higher from where you started), a half step away. This is a one-octave (eight notes, from root to root) Major Diatonic scale.
 
Every time you move from one fret to the next on the guitar you are moving one-half step.
 
Without going into the huge subject of constructing different types of scales on the guitar, know that you can develop a 1-octave Major Diatonic scale beginning anywhere on the neck, either moving up the neck on one string or across the strings.
 
Those two chord families, Major and minor, each have three notes in a chord. Wait a minute, you say. When I play something like a G Major chord in 1st position I’m playing six strings, i.e., six notes. This is true! But if you were to look at the names of each note in that G Major you would find that there are only three named notes: G (three of those in a traditionally fingered G Major), B (two of those), and D (just one, the fourth string open). So, all the essential notes of G Major are there: G, B, and D.
 
You would discover the same thing (three note names only) in any minor family chord you play.
 
The difference between a Major and a minor chord is the “space” or interval between the notes. Both are constructed of a Root (the “first name” of the chord), the third note up from the root, and the note five notes away from the root. These are known as the Root, the 3rd, and the 5th. Collectively they are known as a triad.
 
In a Major chord, the distance or interval between the root and the third is two whole steps. In the case of that G Major, the 3rd, which is two steps away, is B. The 5th is three and half steps away from the root, which is D. So a G Major chord is “spelled” G, B and D.
 
In a minor chord, those intervals are as follows. From Root to the 3rd is one-and-a-half steps, and the root to the 5th is 3 ½ steps, just like in a Major chord. As you can see, it’s all about the interval between the root and the third that defines a chord as being from the Major family or the minor family.
 
Martin Taylor describes the triad as something like a frame around a picture. It’s then all about the “colors” you add inside that frame to make more interesting sounding chords. Some notes sound “dark” as they relate to the triad; some sound “bright.” And this is where we get back to the diatonic scale.
 
Adding notes inside or outside the scale to an existing chord are your colors. But which colors to use? (I am making an assumption here – that you know that every song is written in a Key, which defines the notes used in the appropriate diatonic scale.) I will use the key of G Major for my examples because it is very common in songs played on the guitar, plus the notes in the key are all “natural” (no sharps or flats) except for the 7th tone. Refer back to the explanation of Major diatonic scale construction above if you’re unclear about this. So the notes are:
 
G         A         B         C         D         E          F#        G
 
If we use only those notes to construct triads (root, 3rd, 5th) beginning on each note in the scale it would look like this:
 
G/B/D    A/C/E     B/D/F#     C/E/G    D/F#/A      E/G/B      F#/A/C
 
(remember that the notes in a scale are “circular” and keep repeating after you reach the next root)
 
In music theory those chords are given Roman numerals: I , II , III , IV , V , VI , VII
 
So…. In the key of G Major, based on the G Major Diatonic scale it goes like this:
 
I chord = G Major
 
II chord = A minor
 
III chord = B minor
 
IV chord = C Major
 
V chord = D Major
 
VI chord = E minor
 
VII chord = F#diminished  (yikes! Don’t worry about this one, we are going to do something to it later!)
 
Again, if you are unclear how we come up with those chords, refer back to the list of notes in each chord above and the intervals between the notes in those chords, this will confirm what they are.
 
Now here’s good part. I’m sure you’ve noticed that many if not all the songs you know that begin with G Major (the use if the I chord to begin a piece of music is extremely common in American popular music) use some or all of the chords listed. This is no accident. We are so programmed mentally to the use of the do-re-mi Major diatonic scale for hundreds of years that those chords all sound “good” to us, for lack of better explanation! This is simply because all those chords use ONLY the notes in the scale. Any time a note that is NOT in the scale is inserted into a chord it certainly gets our attention – for better or worse. Musicians refer to the additional notes in chords as “outside” or “inside” depending upon whether or not those notes are in the scale/key. 
 
If you want to add some interesting colors to your chords, add some notes. If you use notes that are in the key, they will sound pretty benign but can be very pretty and interesting. I like to add the 6th tone above the root to Major and minor chords and adding the 2nd tone (which is technically called the 9th in music theory) is a very common in many songs these days, both in Major and minor chords. 
 
In part two of this post I will go into the differences between darker and brighter tones inside chords, where to put them, the concept of tension and release in chords, and a few other things.
 
Peace & good music,
Gene

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