This is an exciting moment! The kickstarter campaign for the second CD of Leo Brouwer's music is live. This is going to be a fusion arrangement of 8 of the Etudes. Please check it out!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rbrantg/impressions-of-brouwer-vol-2-electric-etudes
Monday, July 25, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
the Hendrix chord exploded
The Hendrix chord, a 7(#9), is a favorite among musicians of any style. You can find it littering blues tunes, coloring rock tunes, flavoring jazz passages, and abusing modern classical music. The dissonance between the #9 and the major 3rd is sassy, brutally honest, and brimming with attitude. The conflict between major and minor tonality can't get much more clear cut. No wonder it ended up being nicknamed the Hendrix chord.
Most of us learn one way to play it:
This is a good way to play it. I have no bone to pick with it at all and I use this voicing often. I'm also a big fan of substitution when it comes to chords and arpeggios and my desire is generally to keep things conceptually simple while exploring different applications.
There's this goofy little chord that most people don't give much thought to. It's the diminished major 7 chord. R b3 b5 7. Kind of a creepy sounding bugger on its own. Guess why... It's moonlighting as a 7(#9) chord.
Here's how it works out. Let's say we're in E. Here are an E7(#9) chord and a G#°maj7 chord:
E7(#9): E, G#, B, D, Fx (yup, that's F double sharp, or G if you prefer.)
G#°maj7: G#, B, D, Fx
Hmmm... Notice anything similar about these two? If I ignore the E in the Hendrix chord, I have a G#°maj7 note for note. Ahhh, the beauty of chord substitution.
There's an introduction to the mechanics. Here are some new voicings to play with.
And on the top set of strings:
Some of these are pretty rough on the fingers. The stretches are unusual, but doable. I suggest singing through every one of them to really internalize the sound of each inversion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)