Skip to content

Blog

Major Ninth Chords

A dominant ninth is a dominant chord with a ninth, but that’s not what a major ninth chord is. The major ninth chord (or just ninth chord), as an extended chord, typically includes the seventh and ninth along with the basic triad structure. Thus, a Cmaj9 consists of C E G B and D . When the symbol “9” is not preceded by the word “major” or “maj”, the implied seventh is a dominant seventh—e.g. a C9 consists of C E G B♭ and D.

Read More »Major Ninth Chords

Hi-Gain

Hi-Gain (descended from the more generic electric guitar amplification term high-gain) is the sound most used in heavy metal. High gain in normal electric guitar… Read More »Hi-Gain

Fuzz

Fuzz is intended to recreate the classic 1960’s tone of an overdriven tube amp combined with torn speaker cones. Old school guitar players (like Link… Read More »Fuzz

The Mel Bay F Chord

Question:

In Mel Bays Chord encyclopedia he shows that instead of 5 major chords their are 6 the sixth one being F. xx3211. am i just not looking right cause mel bay and this site have total differences of opinion.

Also some of his minor chords are different like on the site cm is written x3101x and mel bay has it written xx5543. Gm is written xx5333 in mel bays book

They also have fm as one of the basic minor chords written xx3111 and this site does not list an Fm at all.

What am i missing?Read More »The Mel Bay F Chord

Barre Chords

  You cannot play every chord in the guitar’s open position.

What if you wanted to play an F or B chord? How about an F# or Gb chord for that matter? You can’t do it without using a barred chord. There are 12 possible major chords and without barre chords you can only play 5 of them. It’s the same thing with minor chords. A barre chord is where we take a basic chord pattern and “move” it up the neck of the guitar to create different chords.

Read More »Barre Chords

What is chord phrasing?

Chord phrasing is art of taking a chord progression and turning it into a means of personal expression. Chord phrasing allows you total freedom during the performance of a song to do anything you can imagine with the song’s chord structure. In other words, when playing rhythm guitar you don’t have to just play the chords that go along with the progression. Playing just the chords can, and will get boring rather quickly.Read More »What is chord phrasing?