How To Create Interesting Chord Progressions On Guitar

A lot of times we get stuck in that same old rut of I IV V progressions that we've played a thousand times

. Learning how to spice up your chord choices will make your songwriting better and make guitar playing more fun for you. What I'll present here is a couple easy tricks to ease yourself out of that rut.

Tip #1: Change one note in the chord. Take one of your standard chord forms (either barre or open) and move one of the notes one or two frets higher or lower. What happens is that you're adding an extension note to the chord by doing this. Depending on your note choice you could end up with 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, sus, diminished, or any number of things. The advantage here is that you're not "thinking about theory" to get to a new place, but letting your ear guide you. You can figure out the theory later.

Tip #2: Keep one note in the chord. Each note has a job in the chord it's part of. You can keep that one note but change it's purpose by changing all the other notes around it. This works best with notes on the highest or lowest strings of the voicing since that's what our ear is drawn to. Let's say you've got an A minor chord (A C E) and the C is creating a nice melody from the previous chord. You can try making the C the root instead (C major), or the 5th (F major), or the 7th (Dm7), the 9th (Bb9), the 11th (G11), or the 13th (Em13). It could even be a sus note (Gsus). Try each of those chords until you find the one you like.

Tip #3: Play a random selection of notes that "don't belong together". This is a great one for metal guitarists. If you're looking for cool dissonant sounds just grab a random selection of 3 or 4 notes that you would never think to put together and try them both as a strummed chord and as a picked arpeggio.

Tip #4: Open strings. Again, take one of your stock chord forms and open up one or two of the strings. Now move that form around the neck and you'll create all sorts of crazy chords. A good one to try out would be the standard major barre chord form with a 6th string root. Pull your first finger off the top two strings, keeping the other four fretted. Now move that around until something cool catches your ear. Try that with your other barre and open voicings as well.

When you get stuck in a rut, don't feel like you have to resort to music theory to find a way out. Music is about creativity and a spark of inspiration. I've written great songs around happenstance chords and mistakes. Afterward, feel free to dive in and look at the theory of what you're playing. You may find you've got some pretty advanced stuff going on!

How To Create Interesting Chord Progressions On Guitar

By: Phil Johnson

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