It would be interesting to break this down by genre. Jazz likes to "borrow" notes to construct chords that aren't diatonic, and metal likes to add the flat II and V almost as a rule.
What chords do you need?
51–60 of 218 posts
Re: What chords do you need?
#52> For example, "Kitchen Girl" needs "A G" for the first half of the tune (confusingly called the "A part")
This is standard notation, especially in American folk music, that sections are labeled A, B and sometimes C. This makes it very convenient when playing with others who're not familiar with the tune (e.g. This is Kitchen Girl, key of A, two A parts, two B parts)
Re: What chords do you need?
#53"In this video, I describe a common problem with the way guitarists cover popular songs by using open chords far too regularly. The trouble with open chords is that they often ignore important melodic and harmonic features. Hence, zombie chords. So dull they sound dead. It's spooooooooky!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWQNKbXHQk
I started playing guitar in middle school and I hated learning complex chords so I'd do what this video suggested and just play the stripped down/simplified version of the chord.
But it's not just about open chords. If you strip down a Bm7b5 to a Bm and play the Bm on the second fret it still has half of the character of the Bm7b5 chord.
Only recently did I start gaining the patience to learn every suggested chord and it makes a tremendous difference.
That said, I prefer piano for accompanying because the piano's tone is somehow more forgiving with basic chords than guitar is.
Re: What chords do you need?
#54The obligatory video is of course "Four Chords" by Axis of Awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I Rick Beato has kind of the opposite video about "the most complex song ever": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8 The song in question is Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes; plenty of videos exist of it; here's one live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOPh3bTglak
I'm a big fan of the Pachelbel Rant as a sibling to the Axis of Awesome video
Re: What chords do you need?
#55"In this video, I describe a common problem with the way guitarists cover popular songs by using open chords far too regularly. The trouble with open chords is that they often ignore important melodic and harmonic features. Hence, zombie chords. So dull they sound dead. It's spooooooooky!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWQNKbXHQk
I started playing guitar in middle school and I hated learning complex chords so I'd do what this video suggested and just play the stripped down/simplified version of the chord. But it's not just about open chords. If you strip down a Bm7b5 to a Bm and play the Bm on the second fret it still has half of the character of the Bm7b5 chord. Only recently did I start gaining the patience to learn every suggested chord an…
IMO: It's much better to understand how to construct chords and then play music and memorize them by trying to play both the melody and some kind of accompaniment. You end up getting stuck in situations where you need to rearrange the chord or learn a new one and you can build them up that way without drilling.
Re: What chords do you need?
#56"In this video, I describe a common problem with the way guitarists cover popular songs by using open chords far too regularly. The trouble with open chords is that they often ignore important melodic and harmonic features. Hence, zombie chords. So dull they sound dead. It's spooooooooky!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWQNKbXHQk
> While it's almost always I, IV, V, and vi, we have both II or ii, and III or iii, differing on whether the third is major or minor. One way to handle this is just to drop the third from all the chords and play them open
Note that what jefftk calls "open chords" are more commonly called "power chords" (or "indeterminate" or "no3" or "5" chords). This is a distinct concept from the open/"zombie" chords that that youtube video is about. (But if you did use only power chords when covering songs, they would also usually sound quite dull!)
Re: What chords do you need?
#57Trouble with this sort of thing is the subjectivity of 'what chord is this?', taking into account inversions and the like. CMaj7 has C / E / G / B? Who says this isn't Emin6 with the 6th in the bass? It'll depend on the way it's heard and its context within the song, but many approaches can impact this sort of thing. EDIT: I wrote this without carefully reading the article (oops!). Author does a great job with the "a…
> CMaj7 has C / E / G / B? Who says this isn't Emin6 with the 6th in the bass?
The person who wrote it down as CMaj7 and not Emin6/C says.
Re: What chords do you need?
#58"In this video, I describe a common problem with the way guitarists cover popular songs by using open chords far too regularly. The trouble with open chords is that they often ignore important melodic and harmonic features. Hence, zombie chords. So dull they sound dead. It's spooooooooky!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWQNKbXHQk
I started playing guitar in middle school and I hated learning complex chords so I'd do what this video suggested and just play the stripped down/simplified version of the chord. But it's not just about open chords. If you strip down a Bm7b5 to a Bm and play the Bm on the second fret it still has half of the character of the Bm7b5 chord. Only recently did I start gaining the patience to learn every suggested chord an…
Yeah, for instance, it's much easier to melodically space out or articulate the notes in a chord on a piano so they don't clunk all together like the strum of a guitar without ever crossing into arpeggio. That can make for beautiful open melodic chord playing when you're jamming out or noodling around without ever breaking the rhythm.
Re: What chords do you need?
#59>they are each three major chords using the first, fourth, and fifth notes of the major scale I have no idea what any of this means (what is a chord? what is a major chord? what is a note? what is a first/fourth/fifth note? is there a 65th note? what is a scale? what is a major scale? what does it mean that a note is of a scale? what does it mean that a chord uses a note? is there a difference between a chord using a…
A note is something that gives the impression of being a single pitch (frequency). For example, what you get when you play a single key on the piano, or pluck a string on a stringed instrument. Many instruments can only play one note at a time: trumpet, flute, saxophone.
The standard notes used in Western music and discussed in this piece differ in pitch by a factor of the 12th root of 2 (~1.06x). This means that if you go up twelve notes (which we call "half steps", confusingly) your pitch doubles. Two notes that differ by a factor of two are said to be an "octave" apart, and sound almost like the same note.
A scale is a series of notes, and a "major scale" is a specific series where you go up by two notes, two notes, one note, two notes, two notes, two notes, and then one note. This gives you seven different notes in your octave. We can call these notes the "first", "second", etc notes of the major scale. We typically don't talk about "65th" notes because they would be way too high.
A chord is multiple notes played at the same time. The chords I am talking about this post are "triads", which means they are three simultaneous notes
A major chord is notes one, three, and five of a major scale. A minor chord is the same, but the middle chord (three) is moved down one note ("flat" or "minor").
Re: What chords do you need?
#60Trouble with this sort of thing is the subjectivity of 'what chord is this?', taking into account inversions and the like. CMaj7 has C / E / G / B? Who says this isn't Emin6 with the 6th in the bass? It'll depend on the way it's heard and its context within the song, but many approaches can impact this sort of thing. EDIT: I wrote this without carefully reading the article (oops!). Author does a great job with the "a…
I think the difference here is how it functions in the music. Does the chord function as a CMaj7 in relation to the rest of the song, or does it function as an Emin6?