How do some guitarists seem to barely move their hand when they change chords? The answer is inversions. Learning how they work can give you a “slowhand.”
If you know where to find a chord’s root, and the importance of roots in a chord progression, understanding inversions should present no huge challenge.
Here’s an example of a simple chord progression:
-------
-5--10
-5--10-
-5--10-
-------
-------
Instead of playing it that way, try this
-------
-5--6--
-5--5--
-5--7--
-------
-------
That sounds better and is easier on your hand. But, how do you transfer your knowledge of the first place to play the second chord to find the second, easier place? I’m assuming you don’t know note names.
To answer this question, we do need to know about chord roots. The root of the first shape we used for the progression’s second chord is fret 10, string 3. Play that note and now look for it on string 2. You’ll find it on string 2, fret 6. Among the chord shapes you know, which have their root on string 2? The 6-5-7 shape is one of several possible answers.
The point of this discussion is to get you aware of the importance of knowing the root for each chord shape you play.
This tip has to do with a key aspect of learning, enjoying and understanding guitar that I think is mostly absent from both schools and private studios. Here’s a parable to illustrate that missing aspect.
A child brings a drawing he’s made to his mom.
“That’s lovely, honey,” she says.
“Mom, that’s what you said about the last eight drawings I brought to you, even though they all look the same! I’m bored with drawing because I don’tknow what else to draw.”
Well, it turns out that Mom knows a little something about drawing. She can memory sketch a Taj Mahal so real it makes you take off your shoes. But some of the walls of her house still have holes she punched, in her frustration over drawing a simple drinking glass.
“Son of mine, try this,” she says. “Here’s a cube, and here’s a simple man made with a cube. Here’s a house made with a cube. Sure beats stick figures, doesn’t it?”
“Cool!” says the boy.
“It’s cool, it’s fun and it’s easy. But, with a little time, you’ll learn to render any subject you want from cubes like this. What can you make with it?”
And off the boy goes, depicting the family’s Lhasa Apso, the philodendron, and the ‘68 VW Beetle in cubes. Mom actually recognizes some of what he’s cubing together, but that misses the point, which is this:
The kid digs drawing again and has a great approach to understand how drawing works. And, the more he understands, the more he digs drawing. If this isn’t a positive feedback loop, nothing is.
You might be wondering at this point if you’ve mistakenly opened up the “Drawing.com” newsletter, so let’s bring this point home. If you want to enjoy and understand how to play guitar, start with “cubes” – building blocks. Arrange those blocks in a way you think is cool, and keep doing that. A great way to apply this idea is to learn the notes of the major scale just on one string and create your own melodies with them. Read a bit about how melodies work and make some more of your own.
Who do you think will understand and enjoy playing more – the gal or guy who plays nothing but the major scale, or the one who creates a new melody per day?
In this lesson we’ll see that going up is sometimes the same as going down on the fretboard. Let’s give a concrete example. Bar, with the tip of yourfirst finger, strings 2 through 4, fret 7. Pluck or strum that a couple of times, and then remove your fingertip and play those same strings open, or fret 0. You’ve just descended seven frets.
Now, play the same first chord at fret 7 and then zoom up to fret 12. Play strings 2 through 4 there. You’ve just ascended five frets – 12 minus 7 equals five. But this second chord at fret 12 is the same as the chord at fret 0, just one octave removed. Play the two together and you’ll hear their sameness.
The point being made here is that descending seven frets gets you to the same chord as ascending five frets. Here’s some musical math to help you see this important relationship in other chord movements. If you’re trying to go up a certain number of frets to a particular chord, but you’d rather (or need to) go down to that same chord, you do this: subtract from 12 the number of frets you wanted to go up. In our example, we went up 5 frets from fret 7. Subtract that number from 12: 12 minus 5 equals 7. That’s the number of frets we can go down from 7 to hear the same chord we went up to.
If this is confusing, it might be less so if you try this out in several different places. Try going up three and down nine frets, and vice versa.
We’ll need this knowledge of inversions when we start deciphering chord charts.
Let’s return to the one-finger lesson series. The chord we’re learning today actually uses two fingers. It’s a minor chord, which means it feels kind of sad or final.
Here’s how to form the chord: we make our one-finger foundation shape and bar it across strings 1 to 3 or 1 to 4, whichever is more comfortable. We can do this on any fret, but I recommend fret 5. Finger 3 goes two frets up from your first finger, and sits on string 4. Pluck strings 2 through 4 with your right hand and debug any strings that don’t sound.
Let’s put this chord to use. We’ll play just a simple two five one progression. Here’s how we do it:
On fret five, form the chord just described. Then, play strings 2 through 4 on fret 7 with the one finger shape. Lastly, play this shape on fret 3, strings 1 to 3: the one-finger bar with finger 2 added onto fret 4.
Play those three chords together. Take the time to try different rhythms as you explore this progression. You’ll find this mini progression in countless songs.
In coming lessons, we may get into seeing the many shapes for playing one chord. This will be a great help in understanding how chord progressions work.
Here’s a tip on hearing and playing with key centers. This could help players who can already play a few songs. They can even be three-chord songs. You might be looking around for more songs, but also wanting to develop an understanding of what you’re playing. You can get that understanding if you study chord roots and key centers.
These two are really close relatives. Chord roots are the hearts of chords, and key centers the hearts of keys. Let’s get a bit more specific and practical here. Play any chord you know. Your task is to – by ear – identify and then sing the chord’s root. What’s the point here? The point is to become aware of the most important part of the chord. Without awareness of that part, I don’t think you can fully explore music the way you want to.
Exercise two would be to do the same thing for key centers: hear any portion of a melody or a chord progression, and identify and sing the key center. This skill, like identifying the chord root by ear, is pretty easy to acquire, and you don’t even need a guitar. You can train yourself to pick out key centers by ear in a number of ways. One fun way is to use the free computer program at http://www.miles.be.
Once you can identify chord roots by ear, you can accomplish a number of important tasks. One of them is to recognize two different inversions of a chord as being the same chord. The advantage of this is that, if you’re reading a song’s chord chart, you’re not locked into playing the inversion the music calls for. You can play the same chord in a location you think sounds good.
Here are a few ideas for picking out hi-velocity melodies by ear.
A straightforward way to do this is to get software or hardware – like machines made by Tascam – that slows down melodies enough for you to hear the individual notes. Those machines have their place, but if you are slowing down everything you want to transcribe, you’re cheating yourself of a great chance to build your ear.
Someone who can successfully transcribe fast melodies is someone who uses everything he knows about music to make educated guesses at what he’s hearing. He takes the key center, the last few chords played, the scales most likely used by the guitarist he’s transcribing (e.g. Clapton and SRVaughn; heavy pentatonic usage), and other factors that are separate from the actual notes, to drastically narrow down the possible sources of melodic material. In other words, the more theory you know – especially theory related to the genre of the music you’re transcribing – the better.
Once he’s got all that info down, the successful transcriber may listen for the shape of the line. You can actually draw this. Is the line dipping down or moving up? Listen for repeated patterns, e.g. 1 3 2 4 (C E D F in C major), and also very important, the melodic rhythm. Tap out the rhythm of the line. Also, listen for pauses in the line. and identify the notes at those pauses.
Another big, big help: scatting/singing. Even if your pitch is way off, singing gets you inside the music, which gives you a fresh perspective on the line you’re transcribing. And you can scat to some pretty fast lines, faster than you can play. Then, you can slow down your singing so your ear can pick out the notes.
Once again it’s that time of year where year-end lists pour in from all corners of the web. Just like we’ve done in previous years (2008 and 2007), we’d like to take a quick look at the most popular Guitar Noise lessons this year.
This year we introduced a new topic every month as well as a featured artist of the month. A few of those artist profiles made the top ten. We’ll be adding even more featured topics and artist profiles in the new year so keep your eyes open for that.
Happy holidays. Hope to see you all in the new year.
Welcome back to the One Finger Guitar Chord Primer. In this lesson we have a play-along to go with the two-finger chord shape we recently learned.
Here’s the two-finger shape.
Play this on strings 1 to 3, on any fret. In fact, you can use most of the shapes in the One Finger series on any starting fret.
Form the new shape by first making the one-finger foundation shape on strings 1-4 then bringing in finger two directly onto string 3, one fret up from the first finger. Don’t let finger two touch any strings besides three.
Watch the playalong carefully, because the shape just described is used for two different chords. One is played on strings 1 to 3, and the other, strings 2 to 4. The same left-hand shape applies to both chords; you’re only changing the strings your right hand plucks.
Here’s an important note about the following play-along clip, which also pertains to other media files in the One Finger lessons: download them with a right-click, followed by “Save As,” and not a left-click. The following file is “zipped” and must be unzipped before you can access it. If you’re a Windows user, you can unzip with reliable, free programs like Izarc or FreeZip. Windows Vista users can use Windows Explorer to unzip. Mac users can use Zipeg, another free program. I apologize for the inconvenience, which is caused by technical constraints.
After unzipping, play the file with the free and reliable media player VideoLan Media Player, available at VideoLan.org.
We’ve been digging into the “One Finger Method,” but we’re going to take a break from that to do a bit of playing by ear. This new tip is a quick one.
The idea behind this tip is to use just one finger on one string to play a simple melody. The melody we’ll use is from “The First Noel,” the Christmas song.
We start like this: keeping your playing just on String 3 (the G string), press your finger on Fret 4.
Play that note. Then, move your finger to Fret 2. Play that note, then take your (left) finger off completely and play the open string. If you played that correctly and with a steady, even tempo, you hopefully heard the first three notes of this song.
Your task is to work out the remaining notes of the song, based on your memory of it and the starting notes just given. To help you do this, realize that nearly every note is either two frets up or down from the previous note. The exceptions? Leaps of five frets, and a move of just one fret. These happen in a few places.
Sing and listen carefully to find them. As you sing, make your hand rise or fall with your voice, so you get a visual aid to your singing. And stay to just String 3.
Welcome back to the One Finger Guitar Chord Primer. In this lesson we’ll learn another two-finger chord shape.
Here’s the new two-finger shape:
Play this on strings 1 to 3, on any fret. In fact, you can use most of the shapes in the One Finger series on any starting fret.
Form the new shape by first making the one-finger foundation shape on strings 1-4, any fret. Then, bring in finger two directly onto string 3, one fret up from the first finger. Don’t let finger two touch any strings besides string 3.
This lesson will have to end here. Practice the shapes and chord progressions in the previous lessons of this series. As always, take the time to experiment.
Send your comments to dk_NO_SPAM_@MaximumMusician.com. Remove the no spam bit.
As we get nearer the end of the year, YouTube is counting down the most memorable videos of 2009. The first video on the list is a stop motion music video by MysterGuitarMan, which you can check out below.
According to the author, this nifty piece of work involves “Over 1000 cuts. 6 hours of guitar tabbing. 1 hour of shooting. God knows how much editing.” It’s already received 30,000 comments and is closing in on 5 million views. Pretty nifty work, if you ask me. We can probably expect to see a few more guitar videos make this list. I’d be surprised if United Breaks Guitars doesn’t turn up somewhere.
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