split chords in a progression like D/E

I'm trying to learn to strum along to some songs and have basic "chord progressions" I guess you would call it. For example I'm trying to learn to strum along to the song Be Thou My Vision and the chords go like this:

D A/E G D

A/C# Bm7 G A

Bm7 D G-A

Bm A/C# D/F# G G/A D


Well, I guess each chord is strummed for a single measure. Does the A/E then mean that the A is strummed for the first two beats and then switch to the E for the secont two beats of the measure?

Also, if I see the chord Bm7, how do I know if that's B minor 7 or B major 7? would the B major 7 just be noted B7 is there a difference between B7, Bmaj7, Bmin7 or do they even exist?

:eek: <--- I knew a guy in high school who looked like that.

i can't be sure of what you are loking at, but i had a fake book that had chords written like that, and it turned out that one of the letters represented the chord, and the other was an added bass note.
i don't remember which one was the bass note, i just kinda tried the one that made the most sense. i think the first one is the chord, and the second one's the bass note.

When you have a slash chord, the note on the right is the bass note and the note on the left represents the chord to be played. Here's an example...

D/F# = D major chord with an F# as the bass note.
You take your normal D chord (x, x, 0, 2, 3, 2) but switch out the D bass note with an F#, like this (2, x, x, 2, 3, 2).

It's often used in a descending progression for nice voice leading like this - G, D/F#, Em.

** If you have trouble remembering which note is the bass, think of a fraction... the part on the right is the bottom, and the bass is on the bottom (pitch-wise)

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As for your other question, I've done a lot of worship playing (I play for my church, both hymnals for services and choruses for youth), and there are just a few main types of chords that you'll encounter on your chord charts, major, minor, dominant, diminished, and augmented. Extended to 7th chords they are notated Cmaj7, Cm7, C7, Cdim7, and Caug7 respectively. Here are some equivalents as well... Cmaj7 = C?7, Cdim7 = C?7, Caug7 = C+7.

Keep up the hard work, and if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Here are the chords as they are normally labelled.

C major 7 chord is usually written as either Cmaj7 or CM7 (Capital 'M' means major). Another thing is if you just see a letter like"C", this means just play a C major chord.

C minor 7 chord is either Cmin7, C-7, or Cm7 (lower case 'm' means minor)

C dominant chords are written as C7.

C augmented chord is either Caug or C+. Augmented 7th chords are written as CM7#5.

C diminished chord is either Cdim or C with a small circle next to it. If the circle has a slash through it, it's a half diminished chord.

Half diminshed 7th chords are usually written as Cm7b5. Diminshed seventh chords are either Cdim7 or C (small circle)7. (i.e. Co7)

and why does a minor sixth chord have a major sixth?

Whenever you see a chord like Cm6, minor 6 does not refer to that interval above C. C refers to the root of the chord, "m" refers to the triad shape of the chord. "6" refers to the interval above the root that is added to the chord. So it's not the inteval of a minor 6th added to a chord, just the sixth.

I just realized that my previous post is a bit messed up. When trying to show you the symbols for major and diminished, they were supposed to be a triangle and a circle, but I guess this forum doesn't recognize those symbols, sorry.