A Style Chords: The D's

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Myron Clark
5 years ago
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1 A Style Chords: The D's So, you might already know that the open D Major chord itself isn't an A style chord. However, there ARE D chords that can be played utilizing the A string. This of course would be the D barre/power chord with the root on the 5th fret of the A string. As usual, you could always consider chords such as D7, Dm7, etc. Also, I am almost ALWAYS see the D# referred to as Eb. This is one of the few times that I can say I rarely see anything other than Eb in place of D#. In this case, the D# = Eb, the D#7 = Eb7, D#m = Ebm, and D#m7 = Ebm7. Now, all that aside, this lesson won't focus on the D#/Eb series, because it's rare that you find too many songs in the "key" of D#/Eb when we play. It DOES happen, but it's so few and far between that I don't feel we should warrant an actual lesson on them. Always keep in mind that what you are learning in the D and Dm realm can easily be applied to the D#/Eb realm. This is one of the reasons I've organized the course this way. We don't have to worry about redundancy and a simple study of the Major/minor concept will allow us to translate what we are learning by simply moving to a higher fret. Today's Focus I'd like to work with two major aspects here. (1) I'd like to work on using altered root notes, because we will be working with a few of these in the next inspirational riff. Also (2) I'd like to shift our focus directly to what "happens" when we use root notes other than the original chord itself USING slash chords. We'll be a bit more limited in terms of what we can do using the D as an A style chord in barre format, but when we get to the open D concept (D style technically - but that's about the only chord involved there for basic guitar playing) you will absolutely need to understand everything presented here.

2 Slash Chords = A chord that is named for the shape with an added note that takes place of the original root. This CAN be a bit confusing, but if you follow my explanation below I think you'll get it down quickly. Familiar Slash Chords = D/F#, D/G, D7/F#, C/B, C/G This is nowhere near a full list, but you can most likely see exactly what's happening here. The first chord is a D Major chord with the ADDED bass note of F# on the E string. Any note after the slash (/) is technically the added root note. Looking at D/G you can see the same result. You're still forming the D Major chord, but you are adding the bass note where logical. Now, when you get to the C/B chord you can see that I added a parenthesis on the "2" on the D string. This is something I wanted to address. What you see in the tab above is the technical way to play the C/B correctly. However, I never play the 2nd fret note shown in parenthesis. I always play that open. We'll get to that in a moment. Finally you'll see the C/G chord. The full C Major chord is played, but we've added the 3rd fret G note on the E string. What if these weren't "notated" as slash chords? Take a look at each chord from the tab above as well as their NON-slashed names below: D/F# = It's really just a D chord. The F# note is already part of D. D/G = It's really a Gmaj9 (no 3rd). That's a strange way of saying it huh? D7/F = It's really a D7#9. Um...huh? That's another strange way of saying it. D7/F# = As you can expect from D, this is really just a D7 chord. The F# is already part of D7. C/B = This is really just a Cmaj7 chord. C/G = This is really just a C chord. The G note is already part of C.

So - WHY do we use slash chords? This tells the musician that we are emphasizing a given note. An interesting thing to notice is that most slash chords are used in fingerstyle.

3 So - WHY do we use slash chords? This tells the musician that we are emphasizing a given note. An interesting thing to notice is that most slash chords are used in fingerstyle. You DO have times where you strum them, but the note being emphasized is almost always brought into the forefront. Think of "Imagine" by John Lennon. Those notes were always front and center while the rest of the basic chord notes were just strummed. What you just read above is really to prepare you for the open D versions we will be working with. However, we can take a few of these chords from above and make them "slash chords" using just the D and C Major barre chords. Check this out: As you can see, this is an alternate way to work with the C chords. So far, we've only worked with D the way you see it above. Now, when you play this you'll notice it seems to work just fine. You can see the formations very clearly and the slash note (bass note) is obvious as well. The real kicker here is - will it work with minors? Not really. At least not using the bass notes we are using from above. You can try it, but it's going to sound a bit awkward as you play it over and over. The first and third measure sound fine, because those are just minor chords. However, when you use the slash note it starts sounding strange. I wonder why? Here's the D Major scale:

4 Measures 1 and 2: No issues there at all. The D Major scale shows that the 4th fret slash note is absolutely available. Measures 3 and 4: Now, this is a C run. We want to check out the C Major scale for this.

5 Again, everything is fine. So, what about the minors? Why don't those sound so great?

The 4th fret note on the A string is a C# note. Because the Dm scale uses the notes: D, E, F, G, A, A#, C we only want one sharp/flat to appear.

6 I bet you know why immediately. Take a look at the Dm scale for the first two measures: BINGO! The first part works easily because...well - it's a Dm chord. However, the root on the 4th fret doesn't sound right. This is one of those cases where you DON'T want to pick a note outside the box - at least not the 4th fret note. The 4th fret note on the A string is a C# note. Because the Dm scale uses the notes: D, E, F, G, A, A#, C we only want one sharp/flat to appear. While playing a Dm on its own does NOT provide a sharp note (we're just playing the notes D, A, D, F, A) we have added the "wrong sharp" into the mix. If we wanted to add the A# as a NEW root note (inversion) we could make it work. A# is the same as Bb. Remember that we want to make sure that the A# note being added is the LOWEST possible root note within a logical chord formation. When I mean logical I am referring to the notion that we want to still form the overall Dm chord, so we can't just pick some random A# note. The most logical one would be on the 6th fret of the E string. When it comes to the Cm chord the same applies. The 2nd fret note isn't allowed. It would be a B note. We don't want that when playing a Cm chord. The notes in the Cm scale are: C, D, D#, F, G, G#, and A#. (Not all of these notes appear in the image above, but those are the notes that are used in Cm.) So, the B isn't allowed as already mentioned. What WOULD be allowed? Based on what we did with the Dm we added the A# note. How about we add the G# note this time? By switching to the A# note for the Dm and the G# note for the Cm we end up with this:

7 Cool huh?! So, What Did You Learn? This lesson might have seemed a bit short, but you've learned a ton without even realizing it. Basically the easy way to think about what we've done is: 1. Slash chords allow us to alter a given chord by inverting and/or adding a lower root. 2. You can do this with Majors and minors, but minors require an examination of the minor scale. 3. When playing slash chords using minors (a bit rare actually) always remember to USE the sharp/flat note. 4. You can create a slash chord with any adjacent note found in a given scale spectrum. (much like the 'out of the box' notion). Try This! Take any chord you want and try creating a slash chord from it. One of the easiest to practice is actually C Major. It allows so many options. Don't forget to check the files below of Major and Minor scale formulas using all 12 keys.

8 Major Scales C C#/Db D

9 D#/Eb E F

10 F#/Gb G G#/Ab

11 A A#/Bb B

12 Minor Scales Cm C#m/Dbm Dm

13 D#m/Ebm Em Fm

14 F#m/Gbm Gm G#m/Abm

15 Am A#m/Bbm Bm

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