Keyboard Chord of the Month – A7#5

By Tim Martin | July 7, 2009

  Tim Martin, presented of our Worship Keyboard DVDs, will be bringing us a new interesting keyboard chord each month. We start with A7#5. A7#5 – sometimes known as an augmented chord. Basically the 5th is a semitone higher than in a normal 7th chord. This can sometimes be used in place of a dominant […]

Guitar Chord of the Month – D7sus4

By Steve Weeks | June 11, 2009

|— |— |-O- |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— G (sus4) |-O- |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— C (7th) |— |-O- |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— A (5th) |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— |— D (1st) |— |— |— […]

Chord of the Month – Emaj9

By Steve Weeks | May 14, 2009

We’ve not done a chord of the month recently due to the plethora of substitute chords in recent posts. Here’s a “E” Chord with major 7th and a 9th – very John Mayer!   Normally E9 would have a b7 You can take this down 4 frets for a CM79 The open 1st string is […]

Using a capo to play guitar in awkward keys

By Andy@Musicademy | April 21, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 10 (the last part!) We’ve now looked at 9 ideas for using substitute chords as an acoustic guitarist to add interest, strength and beauty to your sound. In this last post let’s bring it all together and use those shapes for playing in awkward, non guitar friendly keys. So far we’ve looked at playing […]

Add9 guitar chords for adding beauty

By Andy@Musicademy | April 10, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 9 In the last post we looked at using ‘5’ or power chords for adding strength to the sound. Now let’s go the other way and look at adding beauty to the sound by using add9 chords. Add9 chords are named because they just take a regular chord and add a 9th note […]

‘5’ chords for strength and power

By Andy@Musicademy | April 6, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 8 So far we’ve looked at alternative or substitute easy to finger chords in a variety of keys. Now let’s look at some chord shapes to change the flavour of the sounds we make. Some times we want our acoustic playing to sound less ‘nicey nicey’ and a bit ‘stronger’ for some out […]

Substitute Chords – B with a detuned E

By Andy@Musicademy | March 31, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 7 This next little trick is again about playing in the key of B without barre chords or a capo but this time uses all the open strings and gives you some great new voicings simply by detuning the top E (string 1) down 1 semitone or a ½ step to D#. […]

Substitute Chords in B

By Andy@Musicademy | March 27, 2009

In this little mini series we’ve looked at substitute chord shapes taken from our Acoustic Intermediate worship guitar DVDs that with help you find some easy one finger changes and hopefully inspired you to you use some different voicings with different sounds. Now let’s look at a key that most guitarists shy away from unless […]

Substitute guitar chords in A

By Andy@Musicademy | March 16, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 5 Before we check out some chord subs in typically awkward keys like B lets look at the last of the open keys. A is very similar to E and in some situations you can readily swap the shapes between these two keys. You will also have seen most of the shapes come […]

Substitute guitar chords in E

By Andy@Musicademy | March 10, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 4 After exploring some substitute shapes in G, C and D now let’s look at the key of E. In E some of the shape move away from the first position and start to explore the dusty end of the fret board.  For instance the very first shape (E) is actually the […]