Saturday, May 29, 2010

Triads

If you're a beginning guitar or piano student, this post might be of some value in putting together what you've learned. Today we're going to investigate the chord triads. In simple terms, these are the three chords that go together when you're playing a simple, three chord song.

If you remember our 1-4-5 positions from the post regarding Major and Minor chords, this might sound a bit familiar. A similar principle applies in the triads. What follows is going to be a generalization, and will not hold true in all songs. But there are a ton of songs where this system will work for you.

So let's get started. When you're playing a song in the key of C (position 1), many songs will use the 1-4-5 positions for the changes. In this case, we're talking about full steps rather than half steps (no sharps or flats are counted). If C is the first position, the fourth position would be F and the fifth position would be G. Let's look at an example.

In the old Hank Williams song, Your Cheatin' Heart, let's say you're starting out in C. There are some 7th chords in here, but we're going to skip those for now for simplicity. We'll cover those in a different post at some point in the future. You don't need them for this lesson. So, starting in C, the first change will be to the F chord, the second change goes to G, and then back to C. (1-4-5). See below:

(C) Your cheatin' heart will make you (F) weep.

You'll cry and (G) cry and try to (C) sleep.

But sleep won't come the whole night (F) through

Your cheating (G) heart will tell on (C) you.

And there you have the 1-4-5 chord progression. Just as a reminder, when you're talking chord progression, you're going in whole steps, not half steps, like you are when you make the chords using the 1-4-5 note positions.

The whole purpose of this lesson is not to teach you how to play an old Hank Williams song (although there's nothing wrong with that if you want to learn it). The idea is to instill that 1-4-5 concept so that you'll automatically know the chord changes, regardless of what key the song starts in. For example. Let's say the singer wants to move that particular song up one step and you need to play it in D. And, drat the luck, you can't your capo. Using the 1-4-5 progression, you'll know that if D is the first position, the fourth position is going to be G and the fifth will be A. (D,E,F,G,A) Make sense? If that's unclear, leave a comment and I'll try to clarify it a bit more.

Next time we're going to continue with the second part of this song and talk about the "off chord."

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Transpose, I suppose

Many times, a song isn't written in the right key for a singer and requires transposing. If you're a guitar player, you can always use a capo to get the song in the right key for your singer, or for yourself in order to make it a more familiar progression. However, bass players and keyboard players sometimes have a hard time with capos.

So here's a little chart I created that you can use to transpose the song into the key you need it to be in. I just put this together, so there may be a few glitches. If you find any, let me know and I'll fix it.

Here's how it works. The top row is the root key of your song. Let's say for instance the song is in the key of C and you want to transpose it to G. It's easy breezy. If the song is a typical 1-4-5 progression with a minor in the 6 position, we have 1=C, 4=F, 5=G and the minor will be A. (We're not counting the half-steps when they're sharps.)

Obviously, if the 1 position (root key) is changing from C to G, those are the only two rows you need to use. Now, go down the C column until you get to F and look across that row and see what we find in the G column. That shows the corresponding chord to be a C. Do the same with the 5 position and you'll find a D in the G column. Now, for the minor. In the key of C, it's an A-minor. When we transpose to G, it becomes an E-minor. See? I told you it was easy.

Try it out and see how it works for you. Click on the chart and it will give you a large example. You can print it out for reference if you'd like. Let me know if you find any issues. Enjoy!