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    Chord Master: How to Choose and Play the Right Guitar Chords
    Chord Master: How to Choose and Play the Right Guitar Chords
    Chord Master: How to Choose and Play the Right Guitar Chords
    Ebook281 pages1 hour

    Chord Master: How to Choose and Play the Right Guitar Chords

    By Rikky Rooksby

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    About this ebook

    Unlike a traditional chord dictionary, Chord Master takes the time to discuss each of the chord types and patterns a guitarist is likely to come across. Rooksby looks at how and why different shapes sound the way they do, helping you to find the ideal chords in any situation, in any style of music, and, of course, the easiest way to play them. Includes over 1 000 chords and their variations, in easy-view color “guitar neck” boxes; chords arranged by key, by type, or by musical style; answers to all your chord queries; sections for beginners, songwriters, and advanced guitarists; chord secrets of famous songs; 20 audio tracks demonstrating chords and chord sequences in musical context; and more!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRowmanLittlefield
    Release dateJan 1, 2004
    ISBN9781476852416
    Chord Master: How to Choose and Play the Right Guitar Chords
    Author

    Rikky Rooksby

    Rikky Rooksby is a guitar teacher, songwriter/composer, and writer on popular music. He is the author of How to Write Songs on Guitar (2000, revised edition 2009), Inside Classic Rock Tracks (2001), Riffs (2002, revised edition 2010), The Songwriting Sourcebook (2003, revised edition 2011), Chord Master (2004, revised edition 2016), Melody (2004), Songwriting Secrets: Bruce Springsteen (2005), How to Write Songs on Keyboards (2005), Lyrics (2006), Arranging Songs (2007), How to Write Songs in Altered Guitar Tunings (2010), and Songs and Solos (2014). He has also written fourteen Fastforward guitar tutors and arranged over three dozen chord songbooks, including The Complete Beatles. He has written entries on rock musicians for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and published interviews, reviews, and transcriptions in many UK music magazines. He is a member of the Society of Authors, Sibelius One, and the Vaughan Williams Society

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      Book preview

      Chord Master - Rikky Rooksby

      inspiration.

      Section 1

      Chord questions and answers

      WHY ARE CHORDS IMPORTANT TO THE GUITAR?

      Chords are a crucial part of the reason the guitar has become so popular (aside from the instrument’s portability — try carrying a piano on a bus). Almost anyone can learn a handful of guitar chord shapes and make them into a simple but effective accompaniment to a tune. A bunch of easy chords was all Bob Dylan used when he became the spokesman for a generation during the 1960s. Chords and chord boxes enable you to make music without reading notes on a stave. Many players teach themselves to play guitar without ever reading the dots — they rely on their ear, and the good old chord box diagram.

      As opposed to instruments that can only play one note at a time, such as brass and woodwind, the guitar is a harmonic instrument, capable of generating chords. And unlike other stringed instruments like the violin, viola and cello, on which chords are possible but awkward due to the curvature of the fingerboard, the guitar’s strings are on a horizontal plane and can be struck simultaneously, and at any volume. A guitar also has frets, which makes it easier to find and play chord shapes quickly and accurately around the neck.

      WHY DO GUITARISTS NEED A BOOK ABOUT CHORDS?

      Many players commit chord shapes to memory by playing songs, but since most songs only use a small range of chords this means many chords are never learned. A chord reference book allows you to look up an unfamiliar chord, just as a word dictionary will provide the spelling and meaning of an unfamiliar word.

      HOW MANY CHORDS DO I NEED?

      Chord books will contain hundreds, if not thousands, of chords, yet the harmony of popular music is limited — much of the time you can play songs by your favourite artists and bands with only a few chord types and a relatively small numbers of shapes. Don’t feel you have to memorise hundreds of chords — just like you don’t need to know every word in a dictionary in order to tell a story. Remember, if it were that difficult the guitar would never have become such a popular instrument.

      HOW DO I READ A CHORD BOX?

      Look at the two chord boxes on page 7 — one for C major, the other for Am11. In a chord diagram the guitar strings are indicated by the six vertical lines. The thickest, lowest-pitched (sixth) string — bottom E — is on the left. On the right is the thinnest, highest-pitched (first) string — top E. The horizontal lines are the frets. The white line across the top of the box is the nut, the piece of plastic or metal over which the strings sit as they pass on towards the machineheads. On some guitars there is an additional ‘zero fret’ at this point, which can be ignored for practical purposes. If there is a number written to the left near the top of the diagram (such as the 5 in the Am11 diagram), this signals that the chord position is higher up the neck (starting at the fifth fret, in this case).

      Above some strings are ‘O’ and ‘X’ symbols. The ‘O’ indicates an open string that should be played; the ‘X’ is a string that’s not played in this chord. The fretting fingers are numbered 1-4. If a number is seen to extend over more than one string, it’s called a ‘barre.’ (see ‘How do I play a barre chord?’ on page 13). A barre is always assumed to go flat on the fretboard from its lowest note across to the right, though it’s only written in on the strings whose notes are actually heard. In the Am11 diagram. for instance, the barre stops at the second string because it does not supply a sounded note on the first string. The third finger does that. But physically the barre finger is also on the first string — it’s easier and more stable to play it that way. Finally, if a letter ‘t’ appears on a bass string, it means hold down that note with the thumb, stretching over from the top.

      WHY DO SOME CHORDS HAVE MORE THAN ONE NAME?

      . A chord can also have more than one name if, when inverted (see page 20), it forms another root chord, as happens in the case of augmented chords and the diminished 7th (see Section 4).

      WHAT ARE THE LETTERS AND NUMBERS UNDERNEATH THE BOX?

      The letters tell you which notes feature in the chord. The numbers refer to the harmonic function of those notes — a 1 tells you where the ‘root’ note of the chord is (which usually determines the chord’s name), a 7 pinpoints the 7th, etc. So you can tell at a glance what the chord’s root is, how many 3rds and 5ths it has, which notes are present in an extended chord, and so on. This knowledge can be put to practical use: if you know which string has the 3rd, you know which note to miss out to make the chord tonally neutral, neither a major nor a minor. If you know where the 5th is, you have the option of sharpening or flattening it to create an altered 5th chord. If you have a 9th chord and you would prefer it as an ‘add 9th’, you can locate the 7th and remove it. We’ll look at these ideas in more detail later.

      WHY ARE ONLY CERTAIN NUMBERS USED?

      Take the scale of C major (we could use any major scale, but C will do as it has no sharps or flats):

      Each degree of the scale is given a number. Notice that the scale has

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