I’ve mentioned this topic before, but now it’s time to give you some more examples of alternative chord voicings. So… why do we even need alternative chord voicings? What does it even mean?
Chords are made up of notes. An ‘A’ major chord for example is made up of the notes ‘A’ (no big surprise there) ‘C#’ and ‘E’. Those notes can be in any order too, any mixture of ‘A’, ‘C#’ and ‘E’, in any mixture of pitches, can be described as an ‘A’ major chord. In any given tuning, whether it be a standard, like GCEA for a ukulele or EADGBe for a guitar, or in some kind of open or alternate tuning, your ability to play combinations of those notes is really only limited by the size and reach of the human hand. That’s why we have chord shapes. Nice little compact patterns that allow us to play the collection of notes we want nice and easily.
The order you play those notes in, their pitch, (so their position on the fretboard) and relative quantities have a drastic effect on how that chord is heard. We call these 'voicings'. The bottom line is that rather than your regular old ‘A’ chord always sounding exactly the same, no matter what style of song you’re playing, you can choose. Imagine if white bread was the only bread, and whenever you needed a bread product it had to be white bread. You wouldn't starve, but it's pretty dull eh? You could cut that white bread into the shape of a croissant, but it’s not quite the same is it?
Some chord voicings make songs sound different, more exciting. Some chord voicings make certain chord changes easier and slicker. Some chord voicings do both, they’re the really good ones. Chord choices that make you sound great, make you look cool, and that you know what you're doing, PLUS make playing easier, are always winners!
Like most things in music there are no hard and fast rules for what to use when. There’s only what you can play, and what you like the sound of. So I’m going to give you a few different chord voicings for ‘A’ major. Just that. One chord can make a huge difference to how a song feels.
Remember your 7ths…
First off though, I’m going to remind you about swapping regular minor chords for regular 7th chords, which we’ve talked about before. Need to play an ‘A’? An ‘A7’ will probably work too. Need to play ‘Am’? An ‘Am7’ will probably sound just as good. Chances are you’ve probably already been using this idea, and accepting it without realising. Anybody who’s played a twelve bar rock’n’roll or blues progression on the guitar that goes, ‘E’, ‘A’, ‘B7’ you’ve probably been told to do it because ‘B’ is a barre chord. Same with you ukulele players and ‘A’ ‘D’ ‘E7’. We do it at Coustics all the time.
The Golden Rule…
The only rule which is fairly unbreakable is that you won’t get away with swapping majors and minors. ‘Am’ is not an alternative to ‘A’.
To go back to our bread analogy, bread and pasta generally fulfil the same kind of role, but that revolutionary ‘spaghetti instead of bread’ sandwich idea isn’t going to work too often. Being creative is good, but some ideas are better than others.
Try It Out…
So here are some ideas, for guitar and ukulele, try them under your fingers, see how they feel. If you like one, try and integrate it into a song you already play, see what effect it has. We won’t worry about the hows and whys of these, and what some of the terms mean, for today, just try them out as chords.
Some of this will be familiar to some of you, because I taught a workshop on it to a local guitar group a few months back. Here’s my guitar chord diagram sheet for ‘A’ major, with a load of useful variations you could potentially substitute in. Yes, some of them are barre chords, but lots aren't. Pay attention to the strings you don't play (marked with the little x's, (strings I haven't marked and aren't fretted you just play open), and to the fret the shape is played on, in the box to the right of each diagram. There's fourteen examples here, no excuses for not finding at least one you like the sound of!
I use alternate ukulele chord voicings less often, but the same rules and ideas still apply. Here are some alternate ukulele shapes for ‘A’ major I found online from UKELIB. In these examples, you always play all the strings, and the open strings are marked with an 'o'.
There are a few shapes here I hadn't ever really tried before. Breaking the ukulele out and giving them a go, I was particularly taken with the fourth and fifth examples (which are actually pretty similar). It strikes me that if you had a song with more than a few bars of 'A' in a row you could put together a nice little combo of substitutions starting with the basic 'A' chord shown in example one.
Please let me know how you get on, and if you found this blog helpful. There are obviously lots of other chords to look at, but also we could do a deeper dive on how best to actual use all these variations in the context of the song. I've given you a few hints about that already, but for now, see how you get on with these.
Cheers!
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