Some suggestions for chord playing

[yourguitarist]

Very often the key to getting tracks to sit well in the mix or be heard without over powering the other parts lies in the playing and not the tone, effects, gain, etc...

Color your roots.

It isnt always necessary to play full chords. Very often you muddy the mix by doubling the bass part. When working with a bass player try playing chord forms that dont have the root note as the bass or leaving out the root note all together. To do this you will have to change the way that you look at chords. Instead of thinking of them as finger shapes learn to see them as harmony to the melody and the bass line.

A brief lesson in harmonic structure

In every key there are 3 major, 3 minor and 1 minor flat 5 a.k.a. half diminish chords that naturally occur. In the key of C the major chords or triads for C are C F & G. The minor triads are D minor E minor & A minor, and the half diminish is B diminish (B minor flat5). The triads are formed by harmonizing or playing 3 notes together. The formula for a triad is simply every other note of the scale up to 3 notes. Think of tri meaning three, and ad as in to ad together; equals adding three notes together, and youve got the idea.

For example the C scale is C D E F G A B C. You create the first triad (chord) by harmonizing the notes C E & G (the C major chord). The second triad would be D F A (the D minor chord), and so on. The first note of the triad names the chord. For example the triad E G B is called the E minor chord.

FYI

You can play any triad three different ways, The first is Root Position meaning the root note (the note that names the triad) is the lowest note. For example the notes low to high for the C major triad would be C E G. The second is First Inversion meaning the second note of the triad is the lowest note ex. E G C. The third is called Second Inversion with the third note of the triad being the lowest note ex. G C E.

Practice.

Learn the inversions for the major chords in all twelve keys. The best way to do this is to learn songs in all twelve keys. Chord charts and books are fine for reference, but not worth the paper that they are printed on for actually learning chords. Pick some easy tunes. Songs like Shenandoah, Amazing Grace, and Pay me my money down, etc are good for this exercise. You can find these songs in most beginning piano and guitar method books. Usually they will be written in the key of C as in no sharps (#) or flat (b) notes. Most of these songs have no more than three chords.

Lets rock!

Now that you have some back ground in how the chords are structured and you have taken some time to learn a few different voicings its time to put the theory in to practice. But how do we know what inversions will work best? What works best is very subjective. Keep in mind that most things in music tend to flow better when you have notes in common. If you study the melody of most songs you will find certain notes and note patterns repeated over and over. When you were learning the various ways of playing the triads did you notice that all of the major chords have notes in common with each other? For example The F Chord (FAC) and the C chord (CEG) both have a C note in them. The G chord (GBD) and the C chord both have a G note in them. This will help to give a good starting point. When moving from chord to chord look for those common notes and try to keep them in the same place as you move. For example when playing the progression (C to F ) use the same C note and simply change the other two notes.

Observe the movement of the individual notes as you change chords. For instance when going from C(CEG) to F(FAC) while the C note stays the same you raise the E note a half step to the F and raise the G note a whole step to the A. Being aware of these movements will help your chord playing to sound more melodic, and interesting.

Remember to keep your voicings small, no more than 3 notes, and stay out of the bass register as much as possible. You will notice that your parts now seem to leap out of the mix. You may even find your self turning your volume down!

This is just a suggestion. As always...experiment, and have fun.

Lou Lombardi, Your Guitarist
http://www.yourguitarist.com
http://www.myspace.com/guitartracks

[Reconsiderate]

[fabrika]

Thank you Lou! Great advice.

[mlr_pa]

Some really good advice there. An example that I'm sure we've all heard, is the Edge from U2. Quite a few of his voicings are done in the "d" chord shape, all over the neck, which allows the bassist to play all those 8th note runs, without being too heavy and muddy.

Inversions are the way to go, expecially in doing multitrack recordings. I've used different inversions in multitracking, with over 6 stereo track of guitars for that wall of sound. ("dream Parade" is a prime example.)

[tokeli]

My guitarist and bass player were JUST talking about this last night after a gig we played. That's so funny. Guitarist puts the bass up top instead I gathered.

[chasin_insane]

Boy......That sure was a lot of information to soak up there....But very informative at the same time.....i had to learn Greek to read it but i did it none-the-less i got it done...i never thought to do that in my recordings and that is prolly why my sound gets kinda muddy when i am not using full blown overdrive....thanks for the tip there I'll havee to give it a try in my next recording and if it works out, I may be a busy man re doing all my old tunes(hehe).......Chasin' Insane