Advanced Essentials Free Lessons

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Advanced Essentials Free Lessons

 

Advanced Essentials Welcome

This series will answer some questions you may have had. Have you ever wandered how to understand and play suspended, augmented, diminished, and 7th chords? This series will explain why each chord has a name and how to understand what that name means so, ultimately, you can play it. 

Once your learn the "why" and "how" of chords, we'll walk through each chord family to see how you can add unique chords to the chord families that you learned in the Essential Series. 

Learning the ins and outs of chords is extremely helpful with songwriting and creating unique progressions. Once you complete this series, you'll be able to build every chord that exists and improve your songwriting ability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

Major, Minor, Sus Chords

The three most commonly used chords with guitar are major, minor, and suspended. This lesson will explore how each chord is built. In fact you only need 3 notes to make up a chord, and only changing one of those notes will determine if it is major, minor, or suspended.

Major chords are by far the most common chords used with guitar and really any instrument. They are sometime referred to as "happy sounding" chords. Minor chords are sad sounding.

Suspended chords are neither major nor minor. They "suspend" the note that determines that quality and create an interesting sound that wants to resolve to a "normal" chord. These chords are often used before moving to a resolved major chord, for instance, to create an interesting musical twist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

Chords Outside of the Family

One of the great things about learning all of these unique chords is actually using them within songs. The best way to do that is to think about how certain unique chords fit within a chord family. Doing this will expand your chord family to include interesting chords to really spruce up your song writing.

Each chord outside of the family has a unique characteristic, no matter what key you are in. As you become more and more familiar with these chords, you'll be able to easily identify which chord you'll need to create the exact progression you want in your song. You may even be able to identify which chord is which in a song that you hear on the radio!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

This Series is included in the Guitar Subscription. Once you join, you will have unlimited access to all 4 guitar series plus the entire archive of weekly lessons covering all styles of guitar and many worship songs.