Friday, February 19, 2016

Striking A Chord: Power Chords, Sus Chords, And Added Notes

Hey! This week we talked about some chord variants when we stop worrying about being quite so tertian. Let's try some exercises!

1) As we mentioned, one great use of power chords is in riffs. They don't carry as much harmonic weight as normal chords, so you can use them to create melodies with your supporting harmony. There's no better way to learn than by doing, so let's try writing a power chord riff! Use any of the rhythmic or scale tricks we've learned so far, just try to make something that sounds cool. As always, if you can't play it yourself, send me a transcription and I'll try to get you a sample recording.

2) Sus chords! Sus chords let you extract some extra movement and dynamics from static harmony. We talked about a bunch of different types of sus chords, so let's make sure you understand them all. Give me the notes in each of the following:

  • A sus 4
  • D sus 2
  • F# sus 2/4
  • Bb7 sus 4
3) And finally we get to added note chords. For this one, I want to examine something I said in the video a little closer. I mentioned that, no matter what quality the triad is, 6 chords always use a major 6th. But why is that? Why do you think that would be the case? Why wouldn't a minor 6 chord use a minor 6th? This might require you to use knowledge from some of our earlier videos.

And that's that! Put your answers in the comments below or on the main video, and we'll see you next week!

No comments:

Post a Comment