One of the questions I’ve been asked now and again is ‘What chords sound good together?‘
Well, there are a couple of ways for me to answer that question I suppose. I could show you specifically, and I could teach you the reasons why chords sound good together so you can figure that out on your own.
In a way, I’ve done both. Today’s beginner lesson shows you all the chords that work well together in the key of C. Simply, they are: C, F, G, Am, Dm and Em. In the video you’ll see that you can put these in literally any order and they’ll sound ok.
In the lesson I actually randomly play these chords in any order, to demonstrate that although it doesn’t end up sounding like any song you know, there aren’t any clashes -- these chords all work well together.
Over at OneFourFive.com I’ve take the time and gone into much more detail which chords work together which each other, but rather than giving you all the specifics, instead I teach the concept of I IV V and how to apply that to finding all the chords in any given key, in a matter of seconds. I’d recommend checking that out if you haven’t already.
Leave a comment below the video and let me know if this was useful for you or not. If so, I can make some more videos showing some of the other common keys as well.
I know there’s a fair amount of interest in different guitar finger picking techniques -- and truthfully I’m sure you could do an entire course just on finger picking -- so I decided to do a little lesson on one of the picking techniques that I like to use.
I like finger picking with this style because it gives a very rhythmic, mellow sound that fits my mood perfectly when I just wanna relax or cool off. Works great with minor chords, as you’ll see here, but feel free to try this guitar finger picking technique with anything that strikes your fancy.
Start using this 2 finger picking technique with the Am7, Dm7 and Em7 chords that I show you here, because you can get used to picking the root note plus the 2nd and 3rd strings. Once you’re familiar with that, try it with some other chords and start moving the string that your root note is on.
Here’s a lesson on finger exercises for guitar. As a guitar player, you are forever strengthening your fingers, not to mention practicing your scales! So, why not do both at the same time?
To be honest, while I was recording this lesson I could feel it in my own fingers… proof positive that these exercises will work you over and build up that strength and dexterity!
Another way to use these finger exercises is to spice up your practice times. Work on going up and down the scale, then working up and down in increments like I describe on the video.
Doing this forces your fingers to become more familiar with each note and the notes around it, and gets you used to quickly changing directions mid-scale.
I used my electric guitar on this lesson, but these finger exercises are just as good on the acoustic guitar. You’ll just have to work a little harder to accomplish the same thing =).
Stroke my ego… leave a comment below the video and tell me how much your fingers hurt after doing these exercises =)
I’m assuming that by now you at least know some of the basic open chord formations… so this lesson is going to expand ever so slightly upon that knowledge. We’re only talking about the open D chord, but this handy little guitar tip can be thrown into literally just about any song you’ll ever come across that has a D in it!
I use Dsus all over the place. Technically the sus I show you here is a sus4.
Quick Theory Lesson:
Wherever you see (sus) it is short for suspended -- it means you’re raising the the second note in the chord (in this case F#) a semitone to G, which is the fourth of D. F# is the third note in the scale… normally you need a root note (D), plus a third (F#) and a fifth (A) to build a chord. Suspending changes the third to a fourth. Confused? I hope not. But you can learn some guitar theory here.
Back to the lesson…
These simple little tricks you can play on the E string, while playing a D chord, can really add dynamics to whatever song you’re playing. Enjoy…
