Troubleshooting Chord Strumming On the Guitar
Strumming chords is essential “bread & butter” technique for accompanying songs with the guitar, and yet it is suprisingly hard to do well. Here’s a short checklist you can run through each time you practice to ensure that you’re getting the best possible sound. Fretting Hand Are all the desired the notes ringing […]
Edelweiss
This haunting version of Rodger’s & Hammerstein’s Sound of Music classic Edelweiss captured my attention when it was re-purposed as the eerie introduction for the televesion adaptation of Phillip K Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” I was so impressed that I decided to learn it, but I noticed that all the version I […]
7th Chords for Guitar – Part 1
Drop-3 Seventh Chords for Guitar Howdy there you plunkers! It’s time to dust off the old Jazz box and prepare to launch yourself upon that excruciating voyage of musical discovery par excellence – that’s right, it’s time to learn your Jazz chords in all inversions! Specifically, we’re going to be focusing on Drop-3 7th Chords […]
Basic Jazz Chords for Guitar
Adding some Jazz Colour to Your Guitar Playing Howdy Again…this is starting to become habit forming…This week on the KNSounds – installment one of my multi-part mini-epic on Jazz-a-matizing your playing. Now…I know what you’re thinking: “Jazz is well hard!” (and if you’re not thinking that you’re wrong!). But that doesn’t mean you can’t add […]
Tritone Substitutions, Part 1
Basic Theory Hi Folk, and welcome back for more lashing of red hot theory. This week I’m going to delve into the arcane mysteries of the dread “Tritone Substitution”, a diabolical techique where an innocent dominant 7th chord is substituted for more diabolically satanic alternative…ahem! Sorry…little musical joke – if you want the scoop, here’s […]
Altered Dominants for Guitar, Part 2
Shapes in the ‘E’ Position Hi Folks Welcome to the second installment in my series on altered dominant chords. Last lesson I introduced you to the basic theory of altered dominant chords. In this lesson I demonstrate the most common chord shapes for the guitar, limiting myself to the ‘E’ type CAGED position (where the […]
Altered Dominants for Guitar, Part 3
ii-V-Is using the ‘C’ & ‘E’ CAGED shapes Hi folks Welcome to the third lesson in my jazz guitar series on using altered dominant dominant chords. I’m getting down to business in this lesson and demonstrating how to apply the altered dominant chords in the keys of D minor and D major, using the ii-V-I […]
Altered Dominant Theory
Altered Dominants for Guitar: Part 1 – Altered Dominant Theory I want to do a short series on using altered dominants chords since they seem to be particularly intimidating from a theoretical point of view. This is largely because of the descriptive notation which generates length chord names. Indeed it is often a lot simpler to […]