Next thing, I wanted to talk to you about is chords, and chords are really important to know in playing in a Blue Grass Band. When you are not playing a solo or lead and when you are not playing counter melodies or what is called back up behind a vocalist.
You will be chopping chords in helping out keeping time for the band. You will actually be playing chords more than you are doing anything else in playing in a band context.
I will not go too much into theory of how chords are constructed, but we will just let you know the short version is a chord. Let us take major chords for now is three notes sounded to chorded, a major triad and a minor triad on top of the major triad.
In a lot of the Blue Grass Music, early country, lot of folk music. Actually, you can play a lot of the songs just knowing three chords and I will show you in the key of A the three basic chords and those are the chords that you would play for that little tune that I just showed you violin cabbage down.
The key of A major, those three chords are A major, D and E and that E often you can play what is called an E dominance seventh which looks like this and all that is this. Here is an E chord and that is the E note of A chord, you take that down two frets or a whole step. That is the flooded 7th,
(Demo),
and that creates the tension once you make the chord resolved back to the A.
The chord I am going to show you is the basic Blue Grass that is called Chop. It is a very percussive. In a Blue Grass band you are going to be the closest that they have to a drum.
If you are playing in a more traditional Blue Grass context and this chord is kind of movable up and down the next, so once you learn the shape you can make a lot of other chords and a lot of different keys.
So for now, to play an A chord and I should tell you this is going to be quite a stretch for you, as you are learning it but if you stick with it you will be able to make the stretch and then it will be very easy for you. After the point but at first you will get quite a bit of fatigue.
Let us take your middle finger, put it on the 5th fret of the E string, okay that is an A note. Now, with your index finger, you put it on the fourth fret of the A string and then, your ring finger goes to the 7nth fret of the D string. So, this is the kind of shape your side will get and now here comes the hard part with your pinky, you got to reach all the way down to the 9th fret on the G string, so that is the shape.
That is the basic Blue Grass Major chord, A chord. Now, to get the D chord, you do the exact same relationship that you have here only instead of you move everything up in this direction, so just take this shape off and keep this three in the same relationship. You do not have any place to put this so just leave that off and that is your D chord and to help you locate it exactly you got your middle finger on the 5th fret with the A note.
You got your index finger on the 4th fret of the D string and you have got your ring finger on the seventh fret of the G string, so as you can see you pay attention to these three finger to same relationship. And now to get your E chord, you simply move your D up two frets, and there is your E. So, A, D, E,
(Demo).
I mentioned that you are going to be doing somewhat of a percussive type of thing in playing chords in a Blue Grass band. And really what you are going to be doing most of the times exenterating the back beat, so if the music is going one and two, and three, and four, and you will be going one and two, and three, and four. To help you get oriented you may want to just hit lightly on one of the low string.
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