Now that you are familiar with how to play bar chords all around the entire fret board, I want to show you how to choose what chords to play together—what chords go together in the family. For instance, in the major scale, we will use G as a sample. We have G, A, B, C, D, E, F and back to G. Now, in the major scale, we want to pick out what chords are 1-4-5, what chords are going to be major or minor, 7th’s, sharps, etc. So, the formula here is we want two whole steps, a half step, then three whole steps, followed by another half step, which will take us back to the beginning, an octave higher.
We have G, our whole step is A. Another whole step goes to B. We need a half step. B and C are natural half steps, so we have our half step. C to D, whole step, D to E is another whole step, E to F—we need a whole step here and that is a natural half step. So, what we need to do is make that an F sharp. E to F sharp is a whole step, and F sharp to G is our half step. They are all of the notes or chords in that scale.
Our first chord is the G. Our fourth is C, and our 5th is D. We want to make the 5th chord to 7th as we have learned before. The 1, 4 and 5 chords are our primary chords. All of the other chords are secondary. In this instance, we want to make all the secondary chords to minor chords. For instance, if you are playing the song in the key of G major and you are playing your C major and your D 7th—your 1, 4, 5—if you wanted to throw an A, an E or an F, even a B, you would want to make those minors.
Another example, let us throw out the C major. In C major—again, same formula—we went two whole steps, a half step, three whole steps, and another half step. So, the distance between C and D is a whole step. D and E is another whole step. E to F is our natural half step, so we have it. F to G is a whole step. G to A is a whole step. A to B is a whole step and B to C is another natural half step. So, we do not have to make any sharps in this scale at all.
Now, our 1, 4, 5 chords are C, F and G. We want to make that a G7th. Those are our primary chords. D, E, A, and B are our secondary chords and we want to make those minors.
So, again when you are playing along, you are learning a new song, you are writing your own songs, you are playing in the key of C, you want to throw in a D or an E, you want to make sure that those are minors. Your C is a major. The F would be major, G is our 5th cord. Those are 7th’s and so on. And again, you go to iconsofrock.com, download all of these patterns, really get familiar with them. This will help, especially when you are learning how to play a new song or trying to figure out a song that you have heard on the radio, or you bought a latest CD. This will go a long way for you.
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