3 Lousy Chords

 

 

Lesson Features
The song track	The Jam along track	The Video Guitar Lesson
	N/A N/A

 

Tabs & Lesson

 Original score by:  Jeff Fiorentino

  Transcription by:  Jeff Fiorentino

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This Lesson's difficulty level  1-10 scale

3

Lesson notes

I've been tinkering around with the songs I learned from my favorite bands since I was about 8 years old.  When I was younger I was always blown away by how these players like Page and Clapton and Beck could find these really cool chord patterns.  For a long time when I was young all I knew were the basic chords that every knows.  Nothing too fancy.

All of my websites are about creating music.  About give you the visitor an understanding of what makes your favorite songs or favorite guitar styles sound the way they do.  Like I always say what I do here goes over the heads of some people.  I think usually those are the people that aren't interested in creating music and only want to be a human jukebox for their favorite artists.  If that's the case like I've said in the past, you should exit now, because you won't like this lesson, it's too helpful for you.  lol

This lesson example is loosely based on a Led Zep Classic from their 1st album called, "Babe I'm gonna leave you".  Actually it's a cover song that they're doing a remake of but forgetting all of that for a moment, I was always in awe of the different chord changes that Page used in that song.  In sections it seems to go on and on forever. 

We've talked in the past about chord alterations.  Where we take a chord and add notes or subtract notes and turn it into something else.  Well for this lesson we're sort of going to do that again BUT more so the case we're going to use the same Friggin' chords throughout this lesson exercise and just mix up the note orders and change position.

Despite what the title of this lesson says, we'll be using more than 3 chords, but not much more, and the end result will be an excellent acoustic lesson and an excellent lesson in teaching you that, if you are creating music (which I hope everyone here does) that there's no excuse for writer's block.  If you ever get into a jam and can't think of something or don't know where to take something.  Try just doing the same chords but changing shape and note order of them, each time they come around. 

This is all part of Tinkering, which I always suggest everyone do.  I call this lesson, "I came to JFRocks UNplugged and all I got was these lousy 3 chords" because those that aren't into creating music probably won't see nor want to learn the point of it. 

Those that do understand see the point of this lesson will find it'll be a very helpful tool for them in their music creating process and their understanding of the fret board in general.  Nobody was EVER better at what this lesson talks about than Mr. Jimmy Page, so that's part of the reason why this lesson is loosely based on his guitar style.

The upcoming Steel Dirigible Music CD and lesson DVD will go into techniques that will make this lesson seem elementary at best, but this is a good and I think fun beginning point for a website lesson here in JFR UNplugged.

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Main Lesson

The main idea here with this lesson is we have basically 2 chords that make up this whole lesson exercise.  Those chords are A minor and D minor.  Everything else is just extra stuff thrown in which stays in key for the most part and keeps things sounding interesting.

The A minor and D minor chord could be a very boring strumming or picking pattern in the open position.  Instead, what I've done is turned the A minor into two separate configurations in two separate positions.  I've also turned the D minor inside out into 3 separate configurations in 3 different positions on the neck.  This gives the effect to the listener of more going on than there actually is.  Really I'm not doing much, but it sounds like there's many chord changes going on. 

I've also broken the E minor chord up into two separate positions and incorporated that to add another dimension to the whole thing and keep it even more interesting. 

So our true main chord pattern is,

Am (v1), Dm (v1), Dm (v2), Em (v2), Dm (v2), Am (v2), Dm (v1), Dm (v2), Em (v1), Dm (v3) and repeat

It's a big circle of what's really a simple chord pattern made 10 times more complex sounding by simply changing the chord shapes as we go.

Our Main manipulated chords

     Am v1    Am v2      Dm v1    Dm v2       Dm v3           Em v1     Em v2

E__0________________________________0___________
B__1_____5_____3_____6_____10_______0____8______
G__2_____5_____2_____7_____10_______0____9______
D__2_____7_____3_____7_____12_______2____9______
A__0_____0__________________________2___________
E___________________________________0___________

Main scale in use

A minor (Aeolian)  A, B, C, D, E, F, G

E__________________________________5_____________
B____________________________5_6_8_______________
G_____________________4_5_7______________________
D_______________5_7_9____________________________
A________5_7_8___________________________________
E__5_7_8_________________________________________

See video for additional input

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Lesson example Tabs

You can use a pick or your fingers, it doesn't matter, it's the chords and their usage that is the lesson here.

E______________________________________________
B________1________3_______6_______8_______8____
G______2________2_______7_______9_______7______
D____2________3_______7_______9_______7________
A__0___________________________________________
E______________________________________________

E_________________________________________________
B_______5_______3________6________0__________10___
G____5________2________7________0_________10______
D____7______3________7________2________12_________
A__0______________________________________________
E_________________________________________________

From here what I suggest is tinkering and mixing up the order even more.  Giving it less structure than I did.  A lot of times I bind myself into a structure for these lessons because they're not songs, they're lessons and thusly they must be structured in some way.

Try stretching this out even more and going back and forth between several forms of Am and Dm and even additional forms of Em.  You could turn this into a whole song if you wanted to.  Believe me, many artists have done just that with similar theory. 

See video lesson for additional help and explanation of course.