• Beginners Hymn Breakdown: Amazing Grace

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    In this lesson, we’re breaking down the hymn “Amazing Grace” and interpreting it with two hymn techniques that every beginner should be acquainted with.

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    The secret to inspiring your own flavorful altered chords!

    pianomansmall.jpgI promised yesterday to show you something else you could do with the 3-chord in “Amazing Grace.” 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…

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    It’s a numbers game! Discover how to crack the code…

    (If you haven’t read Wednesday’s and Thursday’s post, it’d be a good idea to start there as this lesson continues with what we’ve already learned…)

    numbergame-small.jpgToday, we’re going to keep exploring the number system and circle of fifths and see what else we can do to spice up the primary chords we already know.

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    Now you can finally make the numbers work for you!

    Yesterday, we talked about the primary chords of a scale. We established that the 1, 4 and 5 are the most important degrees of any scale and that you can pretty much play tons of songs with these chords. In fact, you can play most songs with just these chords.

    But now, I want to take it a step further and show you how to get those other tones of the scale working for you.

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