Hey everyone I hope you are all doing well. Today I wanted to talk about another musical idea. Lately I've been on a kick about chords and bringing more melodic chords into rock music again and making it work without loosing the cool aggressive sound. Also the idea of using a chord in more than one position in a song to get a different feel or effect.
I started this one off hammering onto an Emaj chord from the open D and A strings ultimately making it kind've a D chord sliding into an E. This is pretty basic stuff but it sounds good. From there I decided to make it interesting and move it to a D9 Chord. now this chord you see some in pop music and you would see it in jazz but you don't normally see these in a distorted rock song. I remember years ago hearing a 9 chord in a Cheap Trick song called "All Wound Up" but that's about it. I do see them in late 60's and 70's era R&B some. The closest chord to it that I hear in rock often is the 7#9 chord. This is mostly made famous by Jimi Hendrix using an E7#9 in Purple Haze.
From there I moved on to another E chord which is the Emaj7 then sliding it down to a Cmaj7. Now these chords you hear all over older R&B music, think Al Green, Tower of Power, etc. I actually started playing the maj7 chord shape when I was a kid. Some had taught me how to play "It's Too Late" by Carol King which contains an Fmaj7. For this particular piece the usage of these chords provide somewhat of what I would describe as an ethereal type sound. It provides a nice break from the tension of the D9 chord.
For the chorus I go back to the Emaj open chord and the D9 chord. The last time through on the D9 I leave the D out of the bass(A string) to free up my pinky to go wandering again as it tends to do and grab an F# note which is the 3rd of Dmaj to give the chord a little more melody briefly turning it into some weird D7 fingering. The surprise comes right after where instead of returning to open chords I go to D and E power chords and go straight up rock style in the vein of "Mississippi Queen, American Woman, or even Spoonman."It's the same D and E as I'm playing as open chords in the beginning just moved higher for a different effect and feel. You can watch it at the link below.
https://archive.org/details/20190814164032
Thank you all for stopping by and have a great day!