You’ve probably heard of “3-chord songs” before. These songs tend to be catchy and popular and only feature a few select chords – usually the same ones repeating themselves over and over.

Have you seen these books in music shops: “How to play 3 chord guitar” or “1000 songs with 3 chords”? It might sound like exaggeration but there really are a huge number of songs which rely on just 3 chords. You might be surprised just how much variety is possible despite this simple musical basis.

The good news? These songs are great for beginner musicians and are also the perfect tool to train your ears and learn how to recognize certain chords. Ear training exercises are great, of course, but nothing beats the capacity of recognizing chords in actual pieces and songs you hear.

Popular 3-chord songs

Let’s start by looking at some of the most well-known 3 chord songs:

• Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash)
• Sweet Home Alabama (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
• Leaving on a Jet Plane (John Denver)
• Shook me All Night Long (AC/DC)
• All Shook Up (Elvis Presley)
• Love is a Rose (Neil Young)
• Donna (Richie Valens)
• Amazing Grace (Daniel Thomas)

You can also explore The Beatles’ early releases, though some of these push the 3-chord concept a little bit further by adding a few extra chords.

As you can see, Click to read the rest…

As players, guitarists are expected to have a wide range of skills including incredible ears. We are asked to play by ear, accompany singers in any key, and improvise. In developing these skills we need to be able to recognize different chord types and their inversions, as well as to be able to translate what we hear to the instrument.

When we are learning different chord forms we seem to be inundated with their seemingly endless variations and notations. But at their essence are four different basic sound qualities: major, minor, diminished and augmented. Within these four basic triad qualities are really just two modes: major and minor. The diminished triad is related to the minor triad, as the augmented is to the major one.

In this article we will review close position major and minor triads as they are found on the guitar. Close position triads on the guitar are perhaps not the most practical chords to use from a playing perspective, but they will help you understand the construction of larger four and even six note chords that you may be more familiar with, and provide a means for learning their sound quality in their most basic forms.

Triads

Triads are three note chords built by stacking thirds, from a root note. If you consider the common C major chord below, it actually only consists of three pitches: C, E and G. The other two notes are just repetitions: another C on the second string and another E on the first string.

A standard C Major guitar chord

Standard C Major guitar chord

Chords sound the strongest when we put their root as the lowest note. Nevertheless, any of a chord’s members can be the lowest, note giving a triad three possible positions: Click to read the rest…

A short while ago, we asked users of our Chordelia: Triad Tutor app what they wanted to learn next. And the answer came back resoundingly:

Seventh chords!
It’s easy to see why. Seventh chords are versatile and can provide a wide variety of interesting sounds. They’re essential in jazz, and can add that special spice or sparkle to any music.

At a glance, they seem simple enough: a triad chord with an extra note added – the seventh of the scale.

But by varying the type of triad and the scale you can produce many types of seventh chord. Dominant, Minor, Major, Minor/Major, Diminished, and so on. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, even before you try to tell them apart in context by ear!

Most musicians never get past the most basic grasp of seventh chords, and so limit their harmony skills by never moving beyond the core triads – or perhaps just learning the dominant seventh chord.

Our new app, Chordelia: Seventh Heaven, is the first dedicated tutor for seventh chords in the App Store and will teach you to hear all the important types of seventh chord easily and reliably – whether they’re played one note at a time or all together, and whichever inversion of the chord is used.

Why learn seventh chords?

If most musicians get by without ever really understanding seventh chords, why should you bother?

Well, if you’re a jazz musician you’ll already know the answer! For rich, interesting harmonies, seventh chords are where it’s at. You’d be hard-pushed to find a jazz standard which doesn’t utilise one or more types of seventh chord. By developing your ear to recognise seventh chords quickly and easily, you’ll be hugely increasing your potential as a player. Just ask the guys over at JazzAdvice.com!

Seventh chords aren’t just reserved for jazz though. Click to read the rest…