"When It's Easy, It's Fun!"

Monday, February 9, 2009

How To Get A More Interesting Sound From Your Chords

by Charley Wyser

When you listen to professional musicians play, you may notice that their chords sound different from the way you are first taught to play chords.

Why is this?

Many professionals have learned to use voicings. What is a voicing?

This is when you rearrange the notes of the chords you play, usually between hands.

Let's take a simple C chord. The notes in a C chord are C, E, and G - 1, 3, and 5, of the C Major scale.

To make things easier, we are going to use the intervals (tones on the Major scale) to refer to voicing the chord.

Let's open up the sound of this chord by playing two of the three notes in the left hand, and the other note in the right hand.

Let's refer to this as the 1 - 5 - 3 voicing.

In other words, the left hand will play the 1 and 5 (C and G), and the right hand will play the 3 in the next register higher.



When you get a minute, try playing a regular C chord in root position (C, E, G), and then try playing this 1 - 5 - 3 voicing of the C chord on the piano.

You will notice the 1 - 5 - 3 has a more "open" sound. It does not sound as crowded. Personally, I prefer this sound.

Now, try this with the C minor, C Augmented, and C diminished chords.

C minor: 1 - 5 - b3 voicing



C Augmented: 1 - #5 - 3 voicing



C diminished: 1 - b5 - b3



You can see that these chords are now sounding more interesting.

This is how professionals play their chords.

We used 3 note chords for our examples in this lesson. But, you will usually apply this voicing concept to chords consisting of 4 or more notes.

The secret is remembering which numbers on the scale (intervals) the chord you are trying to voice is based on.

Experiment with this a little bit so you can understand the concept.

To learn how to play the 1-5-3 voicing in all twelve keys and apply to songs, take a look at my program called "Chord Voicings - Phase I".

Until next time, continue to have fun on your piano adventures.

Charley Wyser
easypiano.com

To view Free Online Lessons, click here


Monday, February 2, 2009

What's The Difference Between a Dominant 7th, a 7th Chord and a Major 7th Chord

by Charley Wyser

The other day, I received an email from someone looking at my video lesson on learning a Simple Blues Lick in the key of F.

They really enjoyed the video, but were confused because they did not know the difference between a Dominant 7th, a 7th chord, and a Major 7th chord.

Since the blues lick is in the key of F, let me explain it in this key.

First, lets go through the notes of the F Major Scale and number the tones.

F(1) - G(2) - A(3) - Bb(4) - C(5) - D(6) - E(7) - F(1)

To form an F Major 7 chord, play the tones 1 - 3 - 5 - 7 (F, A, C, E). When you play these notes, you are playing a Major 7th chord because you are playing an F Major chord (1, 3, 5), and you are putting the 7th tone of the scale (Major 7th) at the top of the Major chord.

This chord is now called a Major 7th chords since it contains 1 - 3 - 5 - 7.

To form an F Dominant 7th chord, we can take this same Major 7th chord (1, 3, 5, 7) and flat the 7th tone of the scale. In other words, we can play F, A, C, and Eb.

We have an Eb in this chord because we have flatted the 7th tone. That is, instead of playing E, we now play Eb.

This Eb is the difference between the F Major 7th and the F Dominant 7th chord.

So the tones for the Dominant 7th chord are 1 - 3 - 5 - b7.

What about the difference between the F Dominant 7th, and the F7 chords.

Well, this one is very easy to answer.

You see, there is no difference. They are one and the same.

The formal name of the chord is the F Dominant 7th chord. The informal, or abbreviated name is F7.

So when you see the chord, F7, you still play 1 - 3 - 5 - b7 tones of the Major scale.

Well, that's it for now.

Continue to have fun on your piano adventures!

Charley Wyser
easypiano.com

To view Free Online lessons, click here