Phase III Lesson Example: ‘Building Extended and Poly Chords for Harmony and Improvisational Purposes’The knowledge of Triads is a powerful tool when taken to a more advanced level, in early Phase II lessons students would have learned how basic chords have 3 notes (therefore the name Triad…literally 3-notes) and that there are 4 types of Triad: Major (1 – Maj 3rd – Perfect 5th) Minor (1 – Min 3rd – Perfect 5th) Augmented (1 – Maj 3rd – Augmented 5th) Diminished (1 – Min 3rd – Diminished 5th) Things become really interesting when we then begin to ‘bolt’ Triads together, for example a C Major Triad with an E minor Triad (creating the notes C E G B) gives us a C Major 7th Chord. Below are more examples of how combinations create different Extended or Poly Chords:
What use is this knowledge you may ask, well a great deal! Beginning to see the inner mechanics of chords and how they can be combined, can open up a whole range of harmonic and improvisation possibilities (often referred to as Vertical Polymodality)…what you as a guitarist or composer do when faced with playing or writing over chords or chord changes. Here one can begin to superimpose one type of chord upon another to extend the sound and engineer certain movements or events harmonically within a song, not to mention how lead lines can be a little more interesting than either playing what is already stated by a given chord/chord progression or playing random (perhaps hit or miss) scale runs. Taking things furtherIf we now take chords that are already Seven(th)s and begin to ‘bolt’ these together then things really do develop into a powerful tool in harmony and improvisation. A classic example concerns the playing of (for instance) a Minor 7 Chord (from the 3rd of the existing chord (for example C Maj7) and creating a C Maj9 (C E G B D) which sounds very effective and much less predictable than (again) restating what has already been sounded by the original chord. This again works in other combinations and (for example) by bolting on another 7 chord from the 3rd of the second chord…this here would create a C Major11. Try these ideas out or why not book into our Tuition Programme if you want to know more.Figure 1 played over a CMaj 7th chord begins in Bar 1 with B minor 7 arpeggio giving a very Lydian sound and pays reference to the chord of C Maj13#11 (C E G B D F# A) with a cascading effect from each subsequent arpeggio finally resting on the notes B and D to give a nice Major 9th ending. This exercise is very effective if then moved to the IV chord in C Major (F Major 7th) but keeping it Lydian (just play the same run from the 10th fret). Alternatively, try playing the Major 7th chord (and lead run) one fret forward. This illustrates how the Lydian Mode sounds so right over such chords. This works well also with chords…try some higher voicings of these over C Maj7th in place of the usual C Maj7 voicings.  From this one lesson it is obvious that one could begin to explore boundaries of the harmonic universe…just imagine other instances where you could superimpose other arpeggios or scales onto this and other chords. An example (to give but one) could involve the use of arpeggios from the E Harmonic Minor scale, infact any of the Diminished 7 inversions within that scale will sound very evocative against the C Major 7th Chord…the reason it works is to do with the relationship between the place of the C Major Chord in the key of G Major (Chord IV) in addition to its’ place within the key of E Minor (G Major’s Relative Minor). Here the C Major 7th is Chord VI, and its Mode is the Phrygian #2…so get exploring, the possibilities are fascinating to both the ears and the intellect. Remember, this example lesson looks at just some of the examples of approaches to one type of chord…how one improvises or composes when considering others is contingent upon how far one is prepared to explore the range of possibilities that exist. *Want to know more? Why not book a course of lessons with Bristol Guitar Tuition, See the contact page for details. |
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