SPICE UP YOUR CHORDS Sound classier today
In this very special feature Andy Saphir sprinkles some tasty alternative ingredients on your rhythm plate to spice up those potentially bland sounding ‘regular’ chords.
Rhythm guitar can be an overlooked part of an electric guitarist’s skill set, with soloing taking the lion’s share of valuable practise time. However, all of us guilty of this should redress that deficit, as the rhythm element is vitallly important, and immensely satisfying when played well.
Listening to great rhythm guitarists is an education in itself, as they seem to create layers of often sublime chords combining different technical and musical approaches.
There are, and have been, several iconic players who are masters of this and incorporate these elements into their rhythm playing. Jimi Hendrix for example blazed a trail for legions of players with classic tunes like Little Wing and The Wind Cries Mary. Other virtuosi like Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer and Mateus Asato share this mastery plus soul legends and studio greats like Steve Cropper, Cornell Dupree, Bobby Womack, Louie Shelton and Reggie Young were among the 60s and 70s session ‘royalty’, able to come up with the most amazingly musical and catchy rhythm guitar parts - or ‘hooks’ if you will.
A vast amount of songs can be basically played with a staple vocabulary of great sounding, yet rudimentary chords like Major, Minor, Major 7th, Minor 7th and Dominant 7th, but what do we need to do to improve upon those perfectly legitimate chords in order to play rhythm parts like those iconic guitarists?
Well, if we have some technical tricks up our sleeves like Hendrix-style hammer-ons and pull-offs, Womack/Dupree style double-stops and sliding shapes, Cropper style country influenced 6ths, mixed with some triads knowledge, a bit of chord substitution and learning some extended chords like 9ths, 11ths and 13ths, we can start to understand how those awesome players made those wonderful sounds.
This is what we’re looking at in this feature. We’re breaking down those approaches into six categories - hammer-on and pull-off colourations, double-stops, sliding shapes, hybrid picking embellishments, harmonics and chords (suspended, 9th, 11th, 13th and Altered). Finally, there’s a full piece at the end which puts many of these elements together.
Each category has four or five exercises which show how those ‘regular’ chords can be hinted at, improved on and made more musical by these various musical ideas.
Read the performance notes and take each exercise slowly, working on technical and musical/stylistic accuracy. And listen to how each section of the exercises and final piece react with the underlying harmony. This will help train your ears to absorb the sound of that approach over the particular chord or progression. Have fun!
NEXT MONTH Andy returns with another brilliant article teaching you to Play Better Solos!
“Hendrix blazed a trail for legions of players with tracks like Little Wing and The Wind Cries Mary”