Using Harmonics To Play Guitar Chords | G Major

In a previous Guitar Chord a Day post we introduced the idea of playing guitar chords with harmonics.

Today's guitar chord is a simple G major triad. This can be played in two positions using harmonics, firstly play this chord with harmonics by lightly resting your finger touching the strings over the 12th fret, once you've plucked them you can remove your left hand to let them ring.
The 12th fret is exactly half way between the bridge and nut of your guitar. Harmonics played here are the same pitch as the fretted note, so harmonics at the 12th fret will have the same pitch as fretting a note at the 12th fret.

We can also play a G major triad using harmonics at the 5th fret.

Guitar harmonics have a beautiful chime like sound and are a simple way to add some tonal variation to common chords.

Subscribe to the RSS feed and tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord Of The Day

Quintal Harmony | Advanced Guitar Chords

We played a guitar chord built up in 5ths in a previous post here. Usually chords are constructed from a scale in 3rds: taking every other note, quintal harmony builds chords in 5ths.

With a root note on the 4th fret notes of our chord are: Ab, Eb, Bb, F

Quintal and quartal chords are frequently used in modal music. Rather than playing through chord changes you can improvise taking the quintal voicing through the mode that is being improvised with.

Although this chord is not constructed in a traditional way, we can also think of it as Ab69 (no 3rd).

Add Guitar Chord Of The Day to your daily practice routine and tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord of the Day.

Allan Holdsworth Chords

Virtuoso guitarist Allan Holdsworth was born in Leeds, UK in 1946. Holdsworth is known for his legato lead lines but his chord use is equally interesting. In today’s we’ll start a new series looking at how Allan Holdsworth approaches chords.

Holdsworth is known for his unusual chord voicings that often involve large stretches and his approach to using chords: rather than following diatonic chord progressions, Allan approaches chords as groups of notes that imply a certain scale, thinking of chords as belonging to a certain key, which imply a given diatonic scale. 

You can then play any note that is diatonically correct for that scale that sounds good. For example if playing a C major chord, the chords may not necessarily be an inversion of any kind of C Major chord, but just something that comes from the scale.

This is quite different to the more traditional jazz approach of playing chord changes.

Creating A Chord Scale

• Play a chord inversion, ideally one that is a little ambiguous and not a standard triad or seventh chord.
• Move each note of the chord up to the next note of the scale you're using
• Continue moving the chord through the scale and use all of these possible chords to play

Here we take one inversion and take it through the C Major scale. This chord uses the notes G, C, D and A. Although this chord is labelled D11 here, Allan would use this chord in place of any diatonic chord from C major. 

Raise each note to the next note in the scale and we end up with the same inversion two frets higher, here named E11 but again used for any diatonic C Major chord. We change from:

• G, C, D, A to
• A, D, E, B 

Raise each note to the next note in the scale. We change from:

• A, D, E, B  to
• B, E, F, C

This time we have a different inversion

Raise each note to the next note in the scale. We change from:

• B, E, F, C to
• C, F, G, D 

Raise each note to the next note in the scale. We change from:

• C, F, G, A  to
• D, G, A, E

Raise each note to the next note in the scale. We change from:

• D, G, A, E to
• E, A, B, F

Raise each note to the next note in the scale. We change from:

• E, A, B, F to
• F, B, C, G

Allan Holdsworth chords. Play combinations of these over any C major chord e.g:

• C major
• D minor7
• E minor7
• F major7
• G7
• A minor 7
• B half diminished

You'll find more Allan Holdsworth chords in these other posts.

Frank Gambale Magic Chords 4

Today's Guitar Chord of the Day continues our series looking at Frank Gambale's Magic Chords.
Here's the fingering for this guitar chord:

As with yesterday's inversion, today's Chord of the Day can be considered in many different ways.

C, D, G
Csus2 (1, 2, 5)
D11(b7, 1, 11)
Ebmajor 13 (13, 7, 3)
F69 (5, 6, 9)
Gsus4 (4, 5, 1)
Abmaj7#11 (3, #11, 7)
Am11 (b3, 11, b7)
Bb69 (9, 3, 6)

We can use our one Magic Chord in place of 8 different chords all with the same fingering in the same position. The chord can function as:

C, D, F, Bb and G dominant 7th chords
C, Eb, F, Bb, Ab, G major7th chords
C, A, D, G, F minor 7th chords

We've looked at using the Magic chord as major7 and minor7 chords, today we'll look at using the Magic Chord as a Dominant 7th chord.  For example, we could play this inversion in the following positions and it could function as a C7:

2nd position C13 (D, G, A, D)
5th position C11 (F, Bb, C, F)
7th position C9 (G, C, D, G)
9th position C69 (A, D, E, A)
12th position C11 (C, F, G, C)

Try playing through some songs you know and dropping in other Frank Gambale Magic Chords in place of major and minor inversions you might use and tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord of the Day. 

Frank Gambale Magic Chords 3

Today's Guitar Chord of the Day continues our series looking at Frank Gambale's Magic Chords. This example is another chord inversion constructed from intervals 1, 2 and 5 or C, D and G if we're in C. As these advanced guitar chords aren't constructed in the usual way of stacking 3rd intervals from a scale they are  ambiguous and can be used in lots of different contexts.

Here's the fingering for this guitar chord:

As with yesterday's inversion, today's Chord of the Day can be considered in many different ways.

C, D, G
Csus2 (1, 2, 5)
D11(b7, 1, 11)
Ebmajor 13 (13, 7, 3)
F69 (5, 6, 9)
Gsus4 (4, 5, 1)
Abmaj7#11 (3, #11, 7)
Am11 (b3, 11, b7)
Bb69 (9, 3, 6)

We can use our one Magic Chord in place of 8 different chords all with the same fingering in the same position. The chord can function as:

C, D, F, Bb and G dominant 7th chords
C, Eb, F, Bb, Ab, G major7th chords
C, A, D, G, F minor 7th chords

Yesterday's Frank Gambale Magic Chord post looked at using this chord a major7, today we'll give more examples of using this chord as a minor7th chord. We can play this chord in several different positions and still have it function in the same way. For example, we could play this inversion in the following positions and it would work as a Cminor7:

3rd position Cm11 (G, C, F, G)
5th position Cm69 (A, D, G, A)
8th position Cm11 (C, Bb, F, C)
10th position Csus2 (D, G, C, D)
13th position Cm11 (F, Bb, Eb, F)
10th position Csus2 (D, G, C, D)

Try playing through some songs you know and dropping in other Frank Gambale Magic Chords in place of major and minor inversions you might use and tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord of the Day.

Frank Gambale Magic Chords 2

Continuing our look at Frank Gambale's "Magic Chords", today introduces another inversion of the Magic Chord constructed from intervals 1, 2 and 5 or C, D and G if we're in C.

Here's the fingering for this guitar chord:

As with yesterday's inversion, today's Chord of the Day can be considered in many different ways.

C, D, G
Csus2 (1, 2, 5)
D11(b7, 1, 11)
Ebmajor 13 (13, 7, 3)
F69 (5, 6, 9)
Gsus4 (4, 5, 1)
Abmaj7#11 (3, #11, 7)
Am11 (b3, 11, b7)
Bb69 (9, 3, 6)

We can use our one Magic Chord in place of 8 different chords all with the same fingering in the same position.

The chord can function as:
C, D, F, Bb and G dominant 7th chords
C, Eb, F, Bb, Ab, G major7th chords
C, A, D, G, F minor 7th chords
chords

Alternatively we could play this chord in several different positions and still have it function in the same way. For example, we could play this inversion in the following positions and it would work as a Cmajor7:
2nd position (B, E, A, E, A) - C major 13
5th position (D, G, C, G, C) - C add9
7th position (E, A, D, A, D) -C69
9th position (F#, B, D, B, E) - Cmajor7#11
10th position (G, C, F, C, F) - Csus4
12th position (A, D, G, D, G) - C69

Try playing through some songs you know and dropping in today's Frank Gambale Magic Chord and yesterday's Magic Chord in place of some other inversions you might use and tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord of the Day.
 

Frank Gambale 'Magic Chords' 1

Some years ago, guitarist Frank Gambale had a regular monthly column in Guitar Player magazine. Some of his monthly columns looked at what he described as Magic Chords. These are advanced guitar chords that are constructed differently to regular triads and are therefore a little ambiguous. The good thing about this is that we can use this chords in several different contexts.

The first Magic Chord is constructed from intervals 1, 2 and 5 or C, D and G if we're in C. We might think of this as being a Csus2 chord:  

Here's the fingering for this guitar chord:

It's not necessary or sometimes even possible to play all of the notes in a chord, so we can also think of this same chord in the same position in several different ways. Here are some examples of how we could use this same chord - the intervals we're using from the chord are after the chord symbol:

C, D, G
Csus2 (1, 2, 5)
D11(b7, 1, 11)
Ebmajor 13 (13, 7, 3)
F69 (5, 6, 9)
Gsus4 (4, 5, 1)
Abmaj7#11 (3, #11, 7)
Am11 (b3, 11, b7)
Bb69 (9, 3, 6)

We can use our one Magic Chord in place of 8 different chords all with the same fingering in the same position.

The chord can function as:
C, D, F, Bb and G dominant 7th chords
C, Eb, F, Bb, Ab, G major7th chords
C, A, D, G, F minor 7th chords

That's a lot of possible uses for one chord. Try using this magic chord in some of the songs you usually play and tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord of the Day.