Spicing Up A Boring Chord Sequence!!

Hey all
Hopefully I can get a thread going around the subject of alternative bass notes underneath a standard chord structure.

I'm no great theorist...so don't shoot me down if you are... but I regularly hear and use these techniques, so I thought I'd put a video on my blog about the subject. Hopefully it will give people some food for thought when songwriting.

Many bands and artists use these ideas to add interest to very standard chord sequences.

It would be great to get some replies and more ideas!!

Watch the video here:
http://www.songwriting4guitar.com/adding-alternative-bass-notes-to-chords

Cheers
Shayman

Excellent post, shayman!

Another idea you could use to spice up chord progressions is by adding 7th chords into the fold. Adding in 7ths can dramatically change the feel of any progression.

Take the standard rock staple progression of: Am - G - F (i - VII - VI)

You could play around with the 7th chords, in that progression, in interesting ways. Maybe:

Am7 - G - Fmaj7
Am - Gmaj7 - F
Am7 - Gmaj7 - F maj7

Just adding that one note to each chord (or just one note to one chord) can dramatically change the mood and tone of the progression.

Sounds like a nice idea Jon. Yeah that's another simple way to just add a little bit extra to standard chord sequences. I quite often use 7th chords without actually thinking about it. It certainly changes the whole feel doesn't it, so thanks for that. I like it fella:)!!

Shayman

Originally Posted by: shayman1Sounds like a nice idea Jon. Yeah that's another simple way to just add a little bit extra to standard chord sequences. I quite often use 7th chords without actually thinking about it. It certainly changes the whole feel doesn't it, so thanks for that. I like it fella:)!!

Shayman

Welcome, brotha! :)