Chords Archives - Page 9 of 14

Beautiful Chord Embellishments & Tricks

Playing chords and strumming patterns makes up part of the guitar rhythm for a song. Adding colorful embellishments to your chords will make your rhythm playing more interesting to listen to. It can give the song just sparkle it needs.

Although it’s really cool to experiment with embellishments, try to use them when it’s appropriate. Use embellishments here and there to lift your music.

In the two videos below I explain how to use and apply embellishments using a basic strumming pattern, open chords C, D, E, F, G, A, Am, Em, Dm, adding sus2 sus4, add4, 6sus4, sus2sus4, dom7 and hammer-on tricks to chords and progressions.

Let’s spice up your rhythm playing.

Enjoy!

Beautiful Chord Embellishments & Tricks Part I

Beautiful Chord Embellishments & Tricks Part II

5 Easy Jazz Chord Exercises

By Klaus Crow 3 Comments

Guest post by Matt Warnock (jazz guitarist and educator)

Learning how to play jazz guitar chords can seem like a tough hill to climb. There always seems to be new chords that you need to learn, and each of these chords has myriad variations and fingerings to work out on the guitar. But, while there are a lot of options when learning jazz guitar chords, you don’t have to learn every shape before you can begin making music.

By starting with a few easy jazz chord shapes, one popular jazz rhythm, and five classic jazz progressions, you’ll build your confidence with jazz chords in no time. This lesson will help you do just that, build your confidence, have fun learning jazz chords, and expand your jazz chord knowledge all at the same time.

Easy Jazz Chord Shapes

To begin your study of these easy jazz chord exercises, you’ll need to get a few chord shapes under your fingers. Each of these chords uses three notes, only the most essential notes, to make them easy to finger on the guitar.

Take a few minutes to become familiar with these chords, and then move on to the next section where you’ll add rhythm and harmonic movement to these shapes. If you aren’t 100% comfortable with any of these shapes, not to worry, as you’ll be working them throughout this lesson, so you’ll become more comfortable with each shape over time.

How to Play and Apply Add9 Chords

By Klaus Crow 8 Comments

To make chords, chord progressions and songs more colorful guitar players use chord embellishments.

Chords like sus2, sus4, maj6, maj7 and add9 can all be used to spice up your playing and create more interesting sounds.

The add9 chord is a big favorite in pop and acoustic rock music.

Chord Analysis

The add9 chord is simply a major triad with an added ninth (9).
The major triad consists of the root (1), the major third (3) and the perfect fifth (5).
So the add9 chord formula = 1 3 5 9

Let’s take Cadd9 chord as an example.
We look at the C major scale: C D E F G A B C and we take the root (1st), 3rd, 5th and 9th note of that scale and you get the notes: C-E-G-D. So Cadd9 = C E G D

Extended Chords 9th 11th 13th for Guitar

By Klaus Crow 7 Comments

Extended chords are usually used in jazz music, but also in other styles like pop, blues and latin music to spice up chord progressions and add some nice flavor to the chords.

When I first learned the theory behind extended chords, it opened up a whole new world for me. All these mysterious chord names made finally sense.

I would use the chords for my own material, incorporate them into some of my favorite guitar songs and started learning some wicked jazz tunes.

Once you play around, experiment and incorporate these chords into your playing it will make guitar playing really fun and colorful.

If you’re new to chord construction then first check out How to Use Chord Formulas and Their Benefits and How to Play The Most Common Types of 7th Chords. These posts will give you the basic chord theory you need.

Let’s dive in…

Triads and 7th Chords

Extended chords are the 9th, 11th and 13th chords.

To understand the chord structure of extended chords we must first know the major and minor triad and three types of seventh chords. We use the “C” chord as an example to show the chord names.

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