Substitute

This Issue: Summer Is Coming

There’s a definite jazzy, summery feel to the chords this issue – you’ll get the hint when you play through these shapes and hear that they are part of a harmonised chord scale, from which you can make a fragment of the classic Summertime. The melody would appear on the first string. However, this isn’t a lesson on how to play

Summertime. Instead, it’s a demonstration of how small or fragmented chords can be moved around in order to create both harmony and melody.

Players such as Joe Pass, Barney Kessel and Martin Taylor manage to add bass lines in, too, but there isn’t space to get into that here. In any case, we only need the open fifth string to give a root for the A-based chords and the open sixth for the rest. Though these are not included in the chord boxes, you can still hear how it would all fit together. Leave the bass notes to the bass player (or indeed your imagination) and you can play these suggestions in any key.

Example 1

This Am6 omits the root (as do all these chords) and has the F# (the 6th) at the bottom. Jazz guitarists often produce harmonically dense chords with surprisingly minimal-looking chord shapes – here is one of them! Don’t forget that this chord can be moved up or down to any key.

Example 2

You can look at this chord as a G# diminished if you like, because the G# is at the bottom. Still, it works very nicely over an E bass note, in which case it would be more appropriate to

E7b9… call it What matters, though, is that is works nicely with the other chords!

Example 3

A second version of Am6 but with a different ‘stacking’ of notes: here, the root is on the bottom, followed by the 5th, 6th and minor 3rd as we rake across the strings. This is all about being aware of the top note to find or create melodies.

Example 4

We’ve seen this shape before, but in this position it becomes B diminished. Adding an E bass note shows it in a b9 different light as an E7 – similar to the version featured earlier, but now in a different inversion with D as its top/melody note.

Example 5

Shuffling the notes in Am6 around again, we arrive at this third version with the E (the 5th) on top at the 12th fret. Try playing the three Am6 chords in sequence and you’ll hear the possibilities available by changing things up and featuring a different note on top – or at the bottom!