The Guitar Study Newsletter for 5/1/2002

By Darrin Koltow

Hello again from MaximumMusician.com. This is Darrin Koltow, webmaster, guitar coach, chord freak, harmony hound, bringing you more music making, guitar playing tips. But first, I want to thank you again for signing up for the Guitar Study newsletter at www.MaximumMusician.com. You can unsubscribe at any time using instructions at the end of this email.

And what did I tell you last week about hogging all these cool tips for yourself, hmm? Tell a friend about the Guitar Study newsletter, or I'm going to come over there and turn your guitar into a ukulele. Get your pals to sign up at www.MaximumMusician.com .

In this issue:

== They're all dom 7 chords ==
== Chord combos ==
== Melodies as chords ==
== Chord fills ==

+++++++++++++++++++

== They're all dom 7 chords ==

This next concept might seem to come from the Twilight Zone, especially for those of you who have not yet fallen head over heels in love with jazz harmony and jazz concepts in general. But, forget that any of what I say here has to do with jazz, and just dig the sound.

The idea I want to introduce is that every chord is a dom7 chord in disguise. What do you think? Pause for a second and let this thought sink in. [Cue music: theme to Jeopardy] Let's illustrate this with some nifty cadences.

(Don't forget our notation, now. The left-most number represents the fret you play on the high E string. Capisci? Esta bien.)

1-0-0-0-x-3 (G7)
0-1-0-2-3 (?)
x-4-3-4-2 (B)

How does this sound to you? What do you think that ? chord is? Sounds like, smells like, feels like a C major, doesn't it? Okay, okay, it is. But it's also one of *many* dominant 7 chords. In fact, it's 9 different dom7 chords! How can this be?

First, I want to warn you: this is heavy duty theory stuff in the next paragraph. But I promise you I'll give a shortcut through it in the paragraph that follows. Okay, hold your breath. Go!

You know, there's an 800 pound gorilla sitting on my shoulder right now, saying "Tell 'em! Tell 'em all about the Melodic Minor scale! Tell 'em!" I gotta get that gorilla off me, so I'll just tell you this much: the reason that the C major chord can also be 9 different dom7 chords is because the notes C, E and G, which make up the C major chord, can be found in 9 different melodic minor keys. In each of those keys, there's an altered 7 chord, which can include every cotton-pickin' note in that melodic minor scale.

Okay, time to come up for air. It's important that you let a tiny seed of curiosity about melodic minor embed itself in your head, so its wonderful sounds can one day find themselves in your playing.

I promised a shortcut to show you how to make 9 different dom 7 chords from the notes C, E, G. Here it is: all you have to do is eliminate the 3 dom7 chords that the notes C, E, and G *can't be*. How do you do that? For each of these three notes, go up one half step. That note will be the root of the dom7 chord you can eliminate. Let's illustrate this:

Note: C.
Go up a half-step: Db
Dom7 chord to eliminate: Db7

Do the same for the other three notes. You'll wind up with the chords Db7, F7 and Ab7. Those are the only dom7 chords that C, E, and G can't be found in. Why? Because the *only* illegal note in a dom7 chord is the major 7. Every other note is fair game.

What's the result of all this hoo-hah? 9 different dom7 chords. Here they are now in all their glory, along with chords you might resolve them to:

x-1-0-2-3 (C7)
1-1-2-3-3-1 (F)

x-1-0-2-3 (D7sus,Add 9)
x-0-0-0-2-3 (G)

x-1-0-2-3 (Eb13b9)
x-1-1-1-3-4 (Ab)

x-1-0-2-3 (E7#9+5)
x-2-2-2-4 (A)

x-1-0-2-3 (F#7b9b5)
x-4-4-4-2 (B)

x-1-0-2-3 (G13sus)
x-0-0-3-2 (G7)
x-1-0-2-3 (C)

x-1-0-2-3 (A7#9)
x-2-0-2-0 (A7)
x-3-2-0-x-2 (D)

x-1-0-2-3 (Bb13b5,Add 9)
x-3-1-3-1 (Bb7)
x-4-3-1-x-3 (Eb)

x-1-0-2-3 (B7susb9+5)
x-0-2-1-2 (B7)
x-0-1-2-2 (E)

Whew! Did you play through all those? Did you catch some of those sweet sounds in there? Man! That A#9-A7-D was *hip.* I enjoyed that so much it hurt.

Notice that I threw in another chord between the first and the last, for some of the cadences. I did this so your ear could say, "Hey, wait a second: that first chord isn't a C chord after all. It's really an A7 or Bb7 or B7 or....chord. Cool!" Yes. When you play a C chord as part of a C major progression, your ear gets accustomed to hearing the notes C, E, and G, and saying, "Oh, yeah: C major chord. Ho-hum. Bo-ring!" We can get your ear's interest by introducing another chord after the notes C, E, and G. That's what we just did here, with the middle chord in the last few cadences.

Okay, I admit that this stuff is a bit advanced. Maybe it would help you out if you just skipped all the words and just played the music. That's always the most important thing, isn't it? Get the *sound.* If you want to *describe* the sound, do it because it will help you or someone else *understand* that sound, so you can make even *better* sounds the next time you play. (Are you getting *tired* of all these *asterisks*? I know *I* am.)

== Chord combos ==

Sounds like a kind of sandwich, doesn't it? It's almost like a sound sandwich, and it's tasty to your hungry ear.

Do you like peanut butter and chocolate mixed together? How about mixing toothpaste with orange juice? You might like the taste of each of these things when you consume them separately, but combining them can make you gag. The point is that the resulting flavor you get from the combination of two or more foods is a whole different animal than either the first or second food. The same is true for music.

If you take two or more chords and play them separately or in isolation from other music, their individual sounds can be pretty predictable. But when you play the chords together, you get a whole new set of sounds that you might not have expected. I call this collection of chords chord combos. Let's look at some tasty sounding chord combos. Play these:

3-3-3-5
3-3-3-4
3-3-3-3
3-3-3-2

Those chords probably have lots of different names, but I like to use these: Gm, Gminor-major,Gm7,Gm6. How did you like the sound of this chord combo? When I first played this diehard, often-repeated combo in a showtune classic called My Romance, I felt like the sky just opened up and smiled at me. I said to myself, "Did *I* just make that cool sound?"

The thing is, two out of these four chords are kind of musical wallflowers: they're not all that brilliant by themselves. I'm talking about the G minor and the G minor 7, now. These guys by themselves, to my ear, sound too final, and too mellow, respectively. Also, the Gminor-major, played by itself, is about the closest thing you can get to a musical depression pill, in the form of a single chord.

Yet, put these puppies together in the order shown and you'll have some great sounds. This kind of experience reminds you how wonderful and powerful music is.

Since we're all into making music here and since I'm such a generous guy, I want to flesh out this chord combo by putting it into the context of a musical phrase. Check it out:

Measure 1
3-3-3-5 (Gm)
3-3-3-4 (Gmin-maj)
3-3-3-3 (Gm7)
3-3-3-2 (Gm6)
--------
Measure 2
1-1-3-x-3 (Cm11)
1-1-2-1-3-1 (F7)
1-3-2-x-1 (Bb)
1-3-2-x-1 (Bb)

Let's do another chord combo. Following the philosophy of shooting first and asking questions later, play these chords, strumming each twice at a slow tempo.
-----------
Bar1
-----------
1-1-2-3 (F)
1-2-2-3 (F+)
1-3-3-x-1 (Bb)
1-2-3-x-1 (Bbm)
-----------
-----------
Bar2
-----------
1-1-2-3 (F)
0-1-3-2-3 (C7)
1-1-2-3 (F)
1-1-2-3 (F)

Was that F to F+ change nifty or what? How about that Bb to Bbm change? These changes occur often enough in tunes to label them as cliches. Yet, cliches have their place. People still want to hear the Happy Birthday song sung to them when it's their birthday, right? Don't think cliche, think, "Another tool in my bag of musical tricks."

This is another instance where the individual chords in the progression may not sound interesting by themselves, but dazzle your ear when you put them together in the right order. I think the Bb to Bbm and F to F+ changes provide most of the razzle dazzle in this combo. The change from F+ to Bb is no biggie. My ear expects Bb after hearing an F+. That's the effect a +5 (C# in this case) has.

I think what this subject of "chord combos" has turned into here is checking out movements within a particular chord. In the previous example, we upped the 5 of an F, we knocked a major 3 down to a minor third; we turned the octave interval of a major chord into a flat 7, making the chord a dom7.

With these kinds of internal changes, your expectation of the chord that comes next changes. Sometimes, this also changes your expectation of what key center is coming up. That's a whole new ball of wax, isn't it? For instance, if you're playing a progression that goes something like C, Am, Dm, G7, and then you swap out the Dm for a Dmin7b5, your expectation of the key center coming up may change. Suddenly, "Ho-hum, C major again. Yawn" turns into "Whoa! That sounds like C minor coming up! Stop the presses!"

I encourage you to experiment with these internal chord changes, to spice up your chord combos. Turn that major chord into a dom 7. Turn that G7 into a G7b9. Sharp the 5 to make that sleepy major chord wake the heck up. Good music is a living thing that needs variety in its diet.

=== Melodies as chords ===

How do you hear the chords behind melodies?
When we hear melodies, what chords do we hear?

An admirer of sculpting asks the sculptor, "How did you learn to do that so well?" The sculptor replies, "I just removed all the extra clay. The shape you see now was there the whole time." The same is true for melodies. When you want to put a chord to a melody, or create a solo based on a melody, you'll want to know what harmony is happening under than melody. If you cultivate the belief that the harmony is already there without you needing to create it from scratch, your task seems a whole lot simpler. All you need to do is recognize the harmony and remove the extra notes. Recognize and remove, rather the create.

Melodies can be seen as warped, twisted, bent arpeggios, waiting for you to recognize the beauty of the harmony they were created from. They're like frog princes or Cinderellas. Okay, maybe we're getting carried away with these descriptions. But do this for yourself: for a song you already know "the" chords to, play the melody for a particular bar or phrase. Then, go back and play a line of smooth, continuous arpeggios instead of the melody. Better yet, play one bar of the melody, followed by a bar of arpeggios. The key thing is to recognize the chord or harmony implicit in the melody.

You know, I had a tough time achieving this recognition myself, until recently. I had a practice routine that had totally separate areas for single line playing and chord playing, except for chord melody playing. When I played chords, I wouldn't play single note lines, and vice versa. I got frustrated one day when working out a solo for a progression, because I couldn't "see" or feel or hear the chord that was playing. I started playing an arpeggio's chord on the strong beats, and playing the arp for the rest of the beats. Now the single note line is intimately woven with its harmony. There's no forgetting where I am. And there's no more feeling like I can't hear the changes, or that the notes I'm playing make no sense.

This is how I understand music: by seeing chords and harmony, put into a swinging, rhythmic framework. Seeing melody as a part of this framework is what lets me enjoy playing single-note lines. Melody as harmony. Nifty stuff.

== Chord fills ==

A former guitar teacher taught me a straightforward way of improvising with chords. And this method also builds knowledge of chord patterns. Rather than describe this method in words, some tab is probably better suited to explain this.

|---------|---------|---------||
|-1-3-5-6-|-8-6-5-3-|-1-3-5-6-||
|-2-5-5-5-|-7-4-4-4-|-2-2-5-0-||
|-0-3-3-7-|-9-3-3-3-|-2-2-5-7-||
|---5-5-5-|-8-------|-3-3-3---||
|---------|---3-3-3-|-------8-||

What do you think? Has this tab introduced you to some new sounds or shapes? Don't hurt yourself, now. Harmony is powerful stuff. Play that tritone in the wrong part of town, and...Anyway, if these are new shapes, take 'em slow.

This tab represents everyone's favorite chord progression, a ii-V-I in C major. It walks the melody up the second string a little ways, and then back down again. It's musical, and it teaches you the chord shapes and sounds. You don't often hear a Dm9, but this exercise will get it in your ear.

You can use this tab is a basis for further chord filling, and for learning chords all over the fretboard. We started here with C, going up to G, and coming back down. Now, do it again starting on D. Then do it starting on E, and the remaining notes in C major, until you get up to C again. You can do this staying to just the second string. Then, repeat the exercise for the first string.

It will take you a while to go through all these variations. And while you're going through them, you'll likely come up with even more variations. If you can find even a tiny part of this exercise that you dig, stay with it and build on it. Why? Because this is a terrific exercise for building your overall musicianship. It prepares you for chord melody playing. Heck, it *is* chord melody playing. In fact, if you had to pick just one exercise to build your understanding of music and knowledge of the fretboard *AND* the ability to play songs, you could do a lot worse than this chord fill exercise. In fact, this ditty ought to be in the top 10 exercises for building the skills and knowledge I just mentioned.

That's a lot of ground we covered this week. There's so much to enjoy from studying harmony, rhythm, and music. I hope you get a sense of this enjoyment from reading this newsletter, and that it motivates you to learn more.

I can't forget to mention my favorite chord book before I let you go: Guitar Chords: a Beginner's Guide is hanging out at MaximumMusician.com, patiently waiting for you to download it, make it yours, and get better acquainted with the harmonic concepts it so clearly explains.

Have a good week, y'all. Enjoy your playing. Replace stress with finesse, read how others got what you want, and write your goals down.

I'll catch you later.