Understanding Chords ( part 2 - the chord progression )

Last time I explained how simple major and minor chords are made and that they tend to be confusing to the guitarist because the guitar has to make 3 note chords ( triads ) over the 6 strings: and sometimes that needs a little more expertise and strategy compared to working it out on a linear keyboard or piano. This problem is usually solved by the guitarist by just memorizing the chord shapes from a chord book or chart and avoiding learning the individual components or the strategy or theory involved in the making of the chords. This method can work for the novice/hobby guitarists but should not be avoided by anyone really studying the guitar and music.

I think just the knowledge of the process of chord making is a nice musical stepping stone to build on as you explore the next step which will be putting the chords into chord progressions.We don't necessarily need complete comprehension at this time, but it is important to think of these lessons as stepping stones to be walked over time and time again as you study and play.

Chord Progressions: A chord progression is a group of chords played in succession: used in music to play or sing a melody or riff over as a part of, or the whole song. 

Eg. We might see something like the song to the right. 

The chord progression for Kumbaya is:  C - F - C (3X) and F- C - G - C

So we have chords made up of 3 notes called a Triads that are put together in various combinations (chord progressions) to make up the popular song we hear everyday on the radio. The challenge for the student guitarist is to go beyond plain knowledge of the those chords to eventually learn how they work as individual chords and how they function together as musical moments.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what for me is inexpressible by any other means.

David Bowie Quote

                                                                      

Understanding Chords ( part 1 - the triad )

To understand chords and how they function within songs and music lets look at a simple C major scale and get to know some of the process of why it works and sounds good to our ears..

Key of C 

( a key is just simply notes that sound good together )

1     2     3    4     5     6    7     8

C    D    E    F    G    A    B    C

Basic major and minor chords are made up of 3 notes that are each,  in musical terms, a 'third' apart from each other - meaning if your first note is C then your next note of the chord would be an E and the next note would be a G. These 3 notes would make up a simple C major chord. 

Here are some examples with the notes of each chord highlighted in red.

        C    D    E    F    G    A    B    C        a C major chord

        C    D    E    F    G    A    B    C        a D minor chord

        C    D    E    F    G    A    B    C        an E minor chord

        C    D    E    F    G    A    B    C        a F major chord

        C    D    E    F    G    A    B    C        a G major chord 

Notice that each chord only contains notes from the C scale and that they are all the same distance apart alphabetically. What actually makes them Major or Minor is the difference in the amount of semi-tones (or guitar frets) between the 1st note of the chord and the 2nd note of the chord. 

A three note chord like this is called a TRIAD and can really set the foundation of harmony in rock, pop, blues, and jazz guitar styles. 

The confusion on the guitar sometimes stems from the fact that we play these 3 note triads on 6 strings and that chords can have many different shapes and a variety of combinations of these 3 notes.

Let's look at one of these puzzles and check out whats going on.

If we look at the G major chord to the right and number the

strings from left to right as 6 5 4 3 2 1,  the notes of the chord

would be G on the 6th, B on the 5th, D on the 4th, G on the 3rd,

B on the 2nd, and G on the 1st.

You can see that for this G major chord on the guitar we use 

3 G notes, 2 B notes and one D. If we exhausted this method

of combining G-B-D note combinations over the whole fretboard

we could come up with dozens of different looking G chords. 

Next time we will look at putting together these major and minor chords into progressions we can use in songs and begin to see and hear there basic functions.