How to use sustained chords to color your playing of otherwise normal and bland chords. Get the tab and chord diagrams here: http://betweenthelicks.com/general/colorful-sus-chords

Video Transcription


Everybody this is Bryan Helmig from Between the leaks. I am here to give you another free guitar lesson and today I am going to talk about using different color chords to kind of replace or to add to standard strumming progression that you might have between like a C, D or A. Just adding little more color to that, just by adding an extra note to chords. The chords I am going to really talk about are sustain chords and there is two different type for sustain second, sustain fourth and in the second you add a nine because the second is the same as the nine basically and a fourth which is the same as the 11th. Sustain four chords and sustain second chords. Let us start with the sustain second, popular chord obviously C, it is very popular probably I do not know how many times I have played. Do just a regular major chord, you add that D to it and your bass would be good an area or more open, free sounding chord and that kind of creates movement, you do not necessarily have to move to a different chord to get a little bit of movement while you are playing. Example of that same chord in a D, you play a D chord just like your willing to drop that E chord down and you go a little more of an area sound. The same thing for the A, you drop down to that open B and it gets that open area sound and that is the sustain second or add nine chord. Sustain four or at 11 are very similar in how they are made but instead of going down from the major third you are going go up to the fourth so here is a C just a regular major chord. Now, you want to get rid of that E, you do not want to play the E with that in there because you get a little bit of class because you want to add an F to it. (Demo) You get a little bit more color. D also is very popular, add that 11th. (Demo) From the major, that is an F# D, and then A instead of that C#, you are going to move it up to G and it is pretty self explanatory how to move these shapes, you are just taken away from the major third and now you are putting in either the second or the fourth. It gets the nice area open sound to it and it creates movement between the same chord and you do not have to change the route or the basic chord that you are playing, you can just go for C. (Demo) Add the nine to the D in 11th. A down to the sustain, after the 11th back to the major and you can kind of move around with that and it creates little bit of a movement, a little bit of color within your core progression, that you are having the actual change of core progression. If you are playing a song that there are vocals above and it is not your own song and you are kind of stock in with the melody because you do not want to move around someone else’s melody, so much expression of the famous song. You can get a blue a bit of clashing between you know the major third and you can get a little bit of a clashing when you get the same notes going at the same time. Keep that in mind and just try it up, you will get used to adding this different colors to your playing, you will be proud and you will be glad you did this. Anyways, thank you and there will be more guitar lessons coming up, just head over to the site, you can get the full tabs for this and more to come I am sure. Thank you and have a good day. (Demo)