How to easily add colour to your open chord progressions
/I'm excited to share with you my new video lesson on a fail-safe approach to adding colour tones to your open chords. Colour tones are simply additional notes that change the sound of a chord to give them a fresh, exciting feel.
It can be hard to know exactly which notes are available to us as we try this, but I have the solution if we are working with diatonic progressions. These are chord progressions that you can expect to find in most popular music as the chords come from the same major or minor scale.
All we need to do is be familiar with a major scale pattern in the area of the fretboard in which we are playing our progression, most likely in the open position (the first four frets of the guitar).
My example in the video is a I-V-ii-IV progression in the key of G, namely G-D-Am-C. I show you two ways to play the G major scale inside the first 5 frets to provide a blueprint of 'good' notes that you could look to add to your open chords.
I show you several different examples for each of the four chords and a sample progression that I demonstrate at the beginning and end of the lesson.
Whilst you're feeling your way around this approach I have created a 'Custom Key Chord Chart'. This worksheet has the key of G major and the notes each chord contains at the top, and 16 chord boxes with the major scale patterns included. There are two worksheets, with and without the note names. I would recommend that you print off the sheets (which you can download by clicking the image below) and use a marker pen to draw in the notes that you think sound good together to create your own custom chord chart
I hope you find this approach really enjoyable and inspiring. Please feel free to email me with any feedback and questions you might have and I'd be happy to help.
