A song is made up of a sequence or pattern of chords. There are some songs that stay on the same chord for the entire song. Other songs may have two chords or more but a very common chord sequence will often have just three chords.

Chords can be referred to by a number and that number refers to the note’s position on the scale. So a “Chord 1” would be the root note, a “chord 4” would be the 4th note of the scale and a “Chord 5” would be the 5th note of the scale. Using this system you can play the song in any key by applying the root note to “chord 1”.

For example, if the song were to be played in the key of C, then “Chord 1” would become C and played at fret 5. Similarly “Chord 4” would be F played at fret 10 and “Chord 5” would become G played at fret 12, since F is the 4th note on the scale of C and G is the 5th note.

The diagrams in this workshop show the six strings horizontally and the frets vertically as seen by the player. The central fret in each diagram shows the initial position of the bar that relates to the chord position, while all other marked notes can be thought of as “safe notes”.

Put simply, you can play or slide to any of the marked notes whilst the song stays at that chord position. The sequence of notes that you play is only limited by your own imagination. Experimentation will soon show however that some sequences will sound good and others not so good. It all rather depends on the feel of the song, the speed of the song and the vocal line. Sometimes simplicity is most effective and often just sliding to one note is all that is needed. By listening to various players you will hear that they have their own favourite and commonly used patterns of these notes that they play between the lines of the vocal.

Ed Paine

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