Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Lesson 09 Major Chords
After you learn the major scale pattern you can start to construct a plethora of chords, even make up your own chords. Chords are made up of certain note of a scale and then played together. It is good to know that just because some chords don't sound pleasing to the ear doesn't mean that they aren't chords. Some chords are made to go with others and sound better accompanied by other chords.
The Pattern
The short explanation of how to play a major chord is to take the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the major scale and play them together. If thats all you need for an explanation then your on your way, but to fully understand this subject we need to put it into context.
The Details
Lets take the G major scale as an example. G, A, B, C, D, E, F#. If we take the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes from that scale we would have G, B, and D. Now we can play them together on the fretboard and have a nice sounding Gmaj chord. But we are only using three strings at the most. To really get a nice full sound we can repeat these notes on higher strings. Since there are D, G, and B strings on the guitar we can play these strings open and they will fit into the chord nicely. The more correct notes you an play at once the better and fuller the chord will sound. If you are using distortion it may be better to use less notes, sometimes more strings can just make distortion sound muddy and nasty.
Constructing other Chords
To construct other chords take the scale that pairs up with the chord you want to make and take the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the scale and play them together. Remember that you may have to move the 3rd note to another string to make it playable. If you want to fill out the sound try to figure out were you can play those same notes other places on the fretboard at the same time.
Like scale chords are moveable as well. Barre chords are the easiest chord to move around the fretboard. Take the major barre chord pattern and move it up and down the neck to make new chords. Chords with open strings in them are a little harder to move up and down because of the weird shapes of the open chords.
