December 29, 2009
Chord Transitions
I started playing guitar seriously about a year and a half ago. I bought an acoustic while I was still in China and taught myself through a variety of online videos. Since I don’t like my singing voice, I’m intent on learning how to improvise and to have that be my creative outlet.
Improvising well is not easy, and I’ve been struggling with it for a while. It’s very formulaic in one sense but also requires very good intuition (kind of like poker). One thing I’m just beginning to notice is the relationship between chords and their pentatonic scales. The most basic fact is that the I chord and the VI chord are relative major and minor scales and thus share the same notes. But the same is true of the IV and II chords. So a transition from the VI chord, say, to either the IV or the II uses the same shape. You just have to be aware of whether you’re landing on a root or a minor third or some other note in the scale.
2 Comments:
ohjoy posted on December 29, 2009 at 16:40 PM
i play guitar, and i write music. i have done for like 6 years. and i have no clue what you're talking about! :D
Taoism posted on December 29, 2009 at 17:26 PM
Heh, the best way I can explain it is to look at the pentatonic scales for C major and A minor (or for F major and D minor). They're the same; they just start and end on different root notes.
So let's say I'm improvising and my jam buddy is playing Am - F. My fingers move over the Am minor shape and then transition to the F major shape when the chord switches. Now let's say my friend is playing Am - Dm. Technically, there's no difference between this progression and Am - F; the notes you hit are the same. What makes them sound different is how you phrase the notes to create a major or a minor feeling.
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