Hi Nick, my name is Eddie. I'm 21 and started "playing" guitar 7-8 months ago.
First of all let me tell you how much I admire your playing and your lessons,
not to mention your theory knowledge.
Now here's my question: you said somewhere that in modern harmony
there's a key change with every chord change in a progression.
Could you please explain it to me with a few examples?
Hope you see what I mean.
Thank you, Eddie

This post has been edited by eddiecat: May 25 2008, 03:56 PM

hi eddie - good to hear from you and its great you are taking such an interest in harmony etc after only 8 months of playing!

well I think in the context I mentioned that, I was referring to a paticuar chord progression which went from cmaj9#11 to Ebmaj9#11.... this is classed as modern harmony in that it doesn't follow the conventions of a key centre.

In this case the 1st chord belongs to the key of G major and the 2nd belongs to the key of Bb major....
When I compose songs I don't really tend to think about keys, but instead choose chords which I think work well together.... This gives you much more freedom and scope to be creative without the strict confines of staying in one key.

check out some of my songs.... they all move around a lot www.myspace.com/nickkellieband

nick

Lovely music, Nick!
A bit too far beyond my current music knowledge, but still impressive.
Here's another question for you:
how do you choose what chords to play, especially when it comes to extended chords?
I mean, do you know the flavour of each extended chord without even playing them
or do you just fumble around till you get the one you want?
Also, how do you usually build them?
Do you always start from the root note or do you rather start from the note you want to "ring"?
Or maybe from a melody which you then harmonize?
I hope my question is clear enough and I also want you to know
that I'm very interested in what I call weird chords (extended).
Thank you,
Eddie

This post has been edited by eddiecat: Jun 8 2008, 02:36 PM

Hi Nick! You're probably too busy to answer my previous post,
but I hope you'll find a couple of minutes sooner or later.
By the way, let me take this occasion to thank you for your great lessons.
Cheers, Eddie

In this case the 1st chord belongs to the key of G major and the 2nd belongs to the key of Bb major....
[/quote]


Waiting for your reply to my previous posts I have another question:
let's take your chord progression Cmaj9#11, Ebmaj9#11...
Instead of using G major and Bb major,
can't I just use C lydian and Eb lydian,
since the notes within the chords belong to those scales? (Root, 3rd, 5th, major7th, 9th (2nd) and #11 (#4))?

Thank you, Eddie

This post has been edited by eddiecat: Jun 8 2008, 02:44 PM

really sorry for my lateness! I have been up and down the country doing various gigs etc and getting in 9am the next day! so I am running on empty a bit.
Q1) "let's take your chord progression Cmaj9#11, Ebmaj9#11...
Instead of using G major and Bb major,
can't I just use C lydian and Eb lydian,
since the notes within the chords belong to those scales? (Root, 3rd, 5th, major7th, 9th (2nd) and #11 (#4))?"

A1) yes that is what you will be using... I was merely pointing out the key that these modes come from, just to get a background behind the modes. In any case, even if you are thinking about G major and playing it over a Cmaj9#11, the chord itself dictates to the ear the mode.... so no matter how hard you try to play G major, over that chord, it will always sound as C lydian...
But to make it sound convincing you need to pick out the strong notes of the chord.


Q2) "how do you choose what chords to play, especially when it comes to extended chords?"

A2) to me extended chords make the scale choice all the more obvious as they give us a lot more harmonic information. With a basic chord it can be a bit more vague as the chord only gives us a limited ammount of interval information.... take a major chord for example - R 3 5.... how many scales have those intervals ? tons! Major, Lydian, Mixolydian, Lydian b7..etc etc.... in this case we might need to look at the entire song chord progression in order to get a clearer picture of the whole harmony and tie our scale choice in with the other chords.

With a more complex chord, like Cmajor9#11 for example.. its much easier... a Cmajor9#11 has the following intervals:
R 3 5 7 9 (Aka 2) #11 (aka #4)
so the only scale that contains these intervals would be lydian - R 2 3 #4 5 6 7.

hope that helps!
nick

This post has been edited by Nick Kellie: Jun 10 2008, 04:34 PM

Thank you Nick!
Even though you're tired, I hope that you are getting great satisfaction from your gigging around.
Thank you for your reply, very helpful and very close to what I thought!
Question: are there any exercises you would recommend me for practicing extended chords?
I'd love to know how to hear them and practice them...
Thank you,
Eddie

hmm well in terms of exercises for learning extended chords... I don't so much learn each chord as a separate entity but instead I learn the parent scales very very well and then learn how to stack intervals at will along that scale shape..... you need to know your scales over the entire neck for this.
When doing this you will have all kinds of extended chord names... to be honest I don't worry too much about the names as much as i do the sound....
Nick