Replace or change a chord using Suspended Shapes
FREE – the Ultimate Chord Guide: Volume 1
Tip of the Week #3
In todays TIP OF THE WEEK, i’ll be talking about how to replace a chord, or change a chord within a progression using Suspended 2nd and Suspended 4th chords. This is the start of one of my favourite things to do when improvising around a chord progression.
The Tip is a Level 1 tip so it may be a bit easy for some, but there is some pretty awesome stuff coming in future episodes for you! So make sure you SUBSCRIBE!
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below or email me kris@thelickfactory.com
Rock on!
Kris m/
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi Guys, I’m Kris Petersen founder of THE LICK FACTORY .com. And welcome back to another week at THE LICK FACTORY Tip of the week.
Now today what we’ll be doing is looking at a simple technique for replacing a chord or changing a chord within a chord progression. Its a pretty simple thing to do, however the challenge is to be able to change the chord or replace the chord without changing the essence of the song. So without making the vocal melody clash, and still keeping the basic idea of how the song is supposed to sound.
If you’re already a Lick Factory student, we’re already looking at this in Season 1..”and then there was the chord”, so you’re probably gonna know this already. However stick around to the end because i do have a FREE download for you today that is going to help you along with this technique. It will also help you get into my head and my thought process when I’m replacing chords.
If you’re not a Lick Factory student, It’s cool. We’re gonna cover off everything in the lesson today. So lets go get into it.
Replacing chords is something that we do a lot of work on in THE LICK FACTORY course. It’s one of those techniques that i use all the time. It’s something that I do very frequently to try and spice up my chord playing.
To replace a chord or change a chord. How do we think about this that’s gonna make this nice and simple and not affect the overall sound of the song. Because that’s the danger when you replace a chord within a progression.
So to start with, what we’re gonna do is use chords that are called suspended chords. Now suspended chords are basically where we take the 3rd, so a standard chord has the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the major scale. And we take that 3rd and we’re going to make it either a 2nd or a 4th. So we end up with a 1, 2,5 or a 1,4,5. So when you play them together in the context of the chord, so if i take an A for example…that would be the A major, If i play an A suspended 4th, so taking that 3rd, in this case it’s a C# and making it a D, so the 4th, it would sound like so…
And then if I made a suspended 2nd, I’d drop the major 3rd, the C# to the B and i’d end up with that…
So we’re gonna use these suspended chords to change up the chord progression or to use these chords to replace a standard Major or minor chord. Now what that enables you to do is get a little bit of chord movement, or tonal movement within your chord progressions, that usually wouldn’t be there. A good example of this is Bon Jovi’s “Wanted dead or alive”… It’s a great example of it actually because you have that Major 3rd there and you’re bringing it up to the Suspended 4th, then back to the Major, back to the Suspended 2nd, and finally finishing on the Major. Now that is a standard type of progression, or standard way of using suspended chords to enhance your chord playing.
Now you can use that on any Major chords, so an A for example…You could even use it on a minor. You can see especially when you are using a suspended to replace a minor, it still suggests the minor tonality, because the minors still in there. The tonality has been set fro what the tonality of the suspended will be because the suspended is neither Major or minor because it has no 3rd.
SO in any case, when you replace a chord, you can basically take a suspended 4th or a suspended 2nd and use it any point to chuck in and replace any chord in any chord progression. What you are gonna be able to do, is depending on what the chord is preceding it and following it is, will depend on which suspended chord you would go for. So for example if your playing a D to a G to an A. If we take those chords and we want to try and keep the notes within the changes as similar as possible. Lets go from the G and then play a D suspended 4th because we have that the 4th finger there still on the high G. And then we go to the A, we’ll play an A suspended 4th as well because we’re going to have the D there which is remaining from both the G and the D chords, still hanging over in that shape so it is an A suspended 4th instead of the A.
You could also replace all those chords for suspended end’s. So a G to a D to an A. So you could play a G suspended 2nd instead, to a D suspended 2nd, to an A suspended 2nd. And it still sounds cool, so the suspended chords enable you to just chuck them in at any given point to replace any Major or minor chord, to replace those chords, or change those chords without a hassle and it’s not going to affect the over all tone of the song.
Now using Suspended chords to replace a chord or change a chord is only the beginning of this whole technique or replacing chords or chord substitution. So what i’ve got for you today, is in the description for this video just below, i have a link that will take you over to the LICK FACTORY site. ANd i have a PDF book that i actually released a little while ago called, ‘The Ultimate Chord Guide: Volume 1’. Now the thing that makes this chord book different than any other is that it talks through not only the standard shapes, it’ll give you a couple of different ways of playing one chord, but it also gives you 2 or 3 substitutions. SO 2 or 3 different chords that you can use in place of the chord. ANd it does this in every key with Major, minor and Dominant 7th chords.
Usually that book is $27 but today i’m giving it to you for free. Just click on the link below, chuck your email address in and I’ll flick you over the download link immediately.
Now if you have any questions that follow on from todays Tip of the week, or anything else or anything that you’d like me to cover, just flick me an e-mail kris@thelickfactory.com. Or just drib me a line on the LICK FACTORY Forum. Until next time guys, i’m Kris Petersen, i’ll see you later.
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KRIS PETERSEN
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