Comments on: What A Difference A Note Makes (In A Chord)

By: Dale Andrew Spencer

Dale Andrew Spencer — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 21:08:52 +0000

oh, a pleasure Tony.
Thanks for the reply 🙂

By: Tony Conniff

Tony Conniff — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 03:16:17 +0000

Dale,
Thanks for your variations, and for sharing your personal experiences too. Very interesting chord sequence!
Thanks,
Tony

By: Tony Conniff

Tony Conniff — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 03:14:47 +0000

In reply to Rich Meitin.

Rich,
Thanks for your ‘variations on the theme’. Very astute and interesting, and sure to be helpful.
Best wishes,
Tony

By: Dale Andrew Spencer

Dale Andrew Spencer — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 19:17:32 +0000

Chords are amazing things, I love them. I’m a huge fan of 7th’s and 9th’s both Major and Minor and the plethora of different variations in which you can play them.
7th’s, i find really interesting for instance a C7 (natural) contains C,E,G,Bb. (1st,3rd,5th,7th)
To change to a C Minor 7 you just drop the 3rd (E) a semitone to Eb
To change to a C Major 7 you simply raise the 7th (Bb) a semitone to B.

And that’s just the beginning, I spent years being confused by theory then one day just had an epiphany on how simple things are really. I can’t write or read music fluently because I don’t practice anymore but you don’t need to be able to do that to write tunes with good chords. Obviously I haven’t touched on augmented and dissonant chords, to be fair I don’t use them much.
My favourite chord sequence to play at the minute is an 8 bar verse part from a song I wrote called ‘Hold on’ (which can be heard here https://soundcloud.com/mr-dale-spencer/hold-on-original )
The chords are BMaj7x4, E/EMaj7/Eb7/AbMin7
I play it in a swung 4/4 rhythm and the change from E to Emaj7 (just dropping that one note) makes me feel great, also I capo the 4th fret, you can’t get the same feel otherwise.

Thanks for making me write something I hope interests others just as you did for me.
Peace and prosperity in music 🙂

By: Rich Meitin

Rich Meitin — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 15:44:05 +0000

The most interesting way I have ever found to discover chord variations is to stop thinking of chords so much as vertical structures but more like the horizontal motion of four voices singing together. If you have enough keyboard skill to plunk out chords on the piano, it’s easy enough to do this. Just imagine that your left pinky plays what the bass singer would sing, that you’re right thumb is a male tenor, and the other fingers of your right hand are like alto and soprano singers.

You want to give each of the singers something more interesting to do then simply moving from chord to chord on the downbeat of each bar. So, if you think of each singer as a separate finger, you can start making them sing little independent lines. For instance, suppose you are on an F chord, with your left pinky on low F, with your right hand playing middle C, and the F and A above that. The middle C is like the male tenor. if you want to move from your beginning F chord to a G chord, you could simply move your right thumb from C to D, and the tenor would then be singing a proper note for the G chord. Or, you could do something more interesting for the tenor, for example, allowing him to sing C, then C# as a transition note, and then finally D. So for a moment, you created a transition chord of F augmented. If you practice with this idea for a while, you will discover all kinds of interesting chord variations, suspensions, and other things you might not even have a name for. It’s a fascinating way to expand your chord vocabulary. Let your fingers be singers!