Wednesday: How to play songs with just two chords and still sound good
Thursday: Now you can finally make the numbers work for you!
Friday: It’s a numbers game! Discover how to crack the code
Monday (yesterday): Here’s a quick way to add even more spice to your songs
*Once you’ve caught up, this lesson will be a cinch!
Let’s get right to work!
Yesterday, I left off by showing you how to add the 3-chord to your songs. We stuck with the basic E minor chord and we inverted it so the melody “G” was on top:
“A-ma-zing grace* how”
C major (1st inversion) ~~~
(E + G + C)*On “grace,” the melody changes to “E” so you can actually invert your chord from “E+G+C” to “G+C+E” (which is 2nd inversion).
“Sweet the”
F major (root inversion) ~~~
(F + A + C)“Sound.”
C major (root inversion) ~~~
(C + E + G)“That”
E minor (2nd inversion)
(B + E + G)“saved a”
A minor 7 ~~~
(E + A + C / A bass)“wretch like”
D major (add 9) ~~~
(F# + A + E / D bass)-OR-
D9
(F# + A + C + E / D bass)“Me”
G major (first inversion) ~~~
(B + D + G)
I promised yesterday to show you something else you could do with the 3-chord on the word, “that.”
As you learned on Thursday, substituting major for minor can sound much better at times. It doesn’t work all the time but it’s usually worth a try.
If it sounds worse, you just revert back to using minor… it’s that simple!
The reason it works is because it’s sort of operating like a 5-chord temporarily. And if you’ve learned just one thing from me, it should be that 5-chords have very strong pulls back to their tonic chords (that is, the “1-chord”). So when you take a 3-chord (in this case, “E minor”) and change it to an E major, it’s temporarily operating like a 5-chord to the next chord, which is A minor. E is the 5th tone in the key of “A.”
So let’s substitute E minor for E major and see what happens:
“A-ma-zing grace* how”
C major (1st inversion) ~~~
(E + G + C)*On “grace,” the melody changes to “E” so you can actually invert your chord from “E+G+C” to “G+C+E” (which is 2nd inversion).
“Sweet the”
F major (root inversion) ~~~
(F + A + C)“Sound.”
C major (root inversion) ~~~
(C + E + G)“That”
E minor (2nd inversion)
(B + E + G#)“saved a”
A minor 7 ~~~
(E + A + C / A bass)“wretch like”
D major (add 9) ~~~
(F# + A + E / D bass)-OR-
D9
(F# + A + C + E / D bass)“Me”
G major (first inversion) ~~~
(B + D + G)
That sounds good!
Only one problem though…
By switching from E minor (B+E+G) to E major (B+E+G#), we’ve gotten rid of our melody note, which is “G.”
Here’s a perfect introduction to altering chords to make them sound the way you want.
And truth be told, it’s the way I found out about a lot of the altered chords I learned when I was 11 years old and playing for a bunch of churches (A long long long long time ago, hehe!)
Basically, new chords that you’ll learn that are not the “obvious” ones come out of dilemmas. Just remember that.
Usually, the story goes something like this.
Darn! That chord sounds good there but how can I play that chord but also keep the melody on top? How can I include the same notes of the chord that pulls to the next chord a lot smoother but still include my melody on top?
These are the questions you ask yourself. And here’s how to get to an answer…
Let’s take the E major chord (B+E+G#), which sounds great, and alter it so that we keep the melody on top.
Since “G” is the true melody, G# would overshadow it because G# is higher than G. So first, I need to invert this chord so that G# is on the bottom. This will leave room for me to play the “G” up top.
E major
G# + B + E
Now, I’m going to put my melody note up top…
G# + B + E + G
(This is a weird chord because it has both a major third and what appears to be a minor third. What you can do is change the “G” to “F##” but that gets really really technical. That would make this chord an E major #9. For the purposes of keeping this post simple, I’m just going to call it a “G” rather than the true #9, “F##” ok? I just wanted you to know how I’d go about naming this chord).
Now, this chord sounds alright to me but when I hear it, something tells me it can be better.
Since I’m also playing E on my left hand, one thing I can do to make this chord better is NOT play E on my right:
G# + B + G on right /// E bass on left
Here’s another tip…
Whenever you take out the keynote of a chord from your right hand and only play it on your left, check to see if the flat 7th note works, especially if the foundation of the chord is major. This will turn the foundation into a dominant chord.
In this case, we’d add “D.”
This makes the beginning of our chord:
[E on bass] + G# + B + D (that’s an E dominant 7 chord, a.k.a. - “E7″).
Then we add our altered note up top:
G# + B + D + G on right /// E bass on left
I don’t know about you but this chord sounds really good! And it works perfectly in the song because it keeps the melody on top.
Basically, we switched our minor chord to a major chord. Then we inverted the major chord to allow room for the melody note.
Once we heard it, we made little changes by taking out the repetitive “E” on the right hand and only played it on the left. Then, we added the flat 7th degree to create a dominant chord as the foundation.
This gave us our masterpiece:
G# + B + D + G on right /// E bass on left
Let’s plug it into our song.
“A-ma-zing grace* how”
C major (1st inversion) ~~~
(E + G + C)*On “grace,” the melody changes to “E” so you can actually invert your chord from “E+G+C” to “G+C+E” (which is 2nd inversion).
“Sweet the”
F major (root inversion) ~~~
(F + A + C)“Sound.”
C major (root inversion) ~~~
(C + E + G)“That”
E7 #9
(G# + B + D + G / E bass)“saved a”
A minor 7 ~~~
(E + A + C / A bass)“wretch like”
D major (add 9) ~~~
(F# + A + E / D bass)-OR-
D9
(F# + A + C + E / D bass)“Me”
G major (first inversion) ~~~
(B + D + G)
I’m tempted to end the blog post here but I have one more idea for ya! (Don’t ya just love me???) :)
Let’s see if we can make this chord even better.
Here’s what I’ve learned over the years. Whenever you have a dominant chord with a sharp 9 alteration (like this chord), you can also sharp the 5th tone in the chord and it will provide even more pull to your next chord.
G# + B + D + G on right /// E bass on left
In this chord, the 5th degree is “B.”
E major scale
E F# G# A B C# D#
Change that to B# (or for simplicity’s sake, let’s just say “C” for this blog post).
Now you get:
E7 #9#5
G# + C + D + G on right /// E bass on left
Now, let’s try to plug it in…
“A-ma-zing grace* how”
C major (1st inversion) ~~~
(E + G + C)*On “grace,” the melody changes to “E” so you can actually invert your chord from “E+G+C” to “G+C+E” (which is 2nd inversion).
“Sweet the”
F major (root inversion) ~~~
(F + A + C)“Sound.”
C major (root inversion) ~~~
(C + E + G)“That”
E7 #9
(G# + B + D + G / E bass)-OR-
E7 #9#5
(G# + C + D + G / E bass)“saved a”
A minor 7 ~~~
(E + A + C / A bass)“wretch like”
D major (add 9) ~~~
(F# + A + E / D bass)-OR-
D9
(F# + A + C + E / D bass)“Me”
G major (first inversion) ~~~
(B + D + G)
*I know that’s a big jump from the E chord you just learned to the next one (A chord) but after practicing it, you’ll be fine! The key is keeping that melody on top and since the melody jumps from “G” to “C,” it’s not unusual for the chords to jump to follow it.
Well, that’s all for today!
I’d like to hear what you guys think about these two new chords. Let me know…
Until next time,
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