Major Chord that Sounds Like a Minor. Simple Chords on Guitar
Hey guys welcome to another fingerstyle guitar lesson. Today I want to show you how to play a major chord that sounds like a minor. Don’t worry, we will stick to simple chords!
A triad is the most basic chord we have in music.
If you have been playing for few months (or even weeks) chances are you are using triads. Basic chords such as C major, A minor etc are actually triads.
A triad is a bunch of notes that make up a chord. When you play a C major chord you are playing the root note C, the major 3rd E and the perfect 5th G. A lot of guitar players (especially beginners) don’t know that so they end up playing always the same chords.
Once you learn how to build chords, you will also be able to learn how to create ones, change and improve the ones you already know and also come up with new possibilities.
In this lesson I am going to show you how to play E minor 7 and A major chord.
We will break down the E minor 7 so that we can visualize it as a Major triad (chord) of G which will have the same shape as the A major chord.
I know, it doesn’t make much sense in words so I will do my best to explain this concept on video.
I hope you enjoy this lesson guys.
The Chord Progression for this simple chords lesson is Em7 and A.
The Em7 is a very basic chord with the extended 7th. The notes that make up this chord are E – G – B – D.
The awesome thing about Min7 chords is the fact that we consider them as Major triads with a different bass note.
The E minor 7 chord notes are E G B D. If we get rid of the first note E we’ll have a G major chord (G B D). We can then consider the E minor 7 to be a G major with the E on the bass.
Same Chord Shape
If we are going to use consider the E minor 7 chord to be a major triad with a E on the bass than it is easy to play the chord progression Em7 – A as the chord G will have the same shape as the A major.
This is one of the example I am playing.
Notice how the top three strings share the same chord shape.
Good luck guys!
