Guitar Noise

You do remember learning about the olden days, back when people thought that the world was flat and maps of the then-known world contained the above phrase at the edges, don’t you? It always seemed to me that “here there be monsters” could easily be substituted for any of the Surgeon General’s admonitions and not a lot would be lost in translation.

But I digress…

The point in bringing this up is to stress the importance of writing things down. Those of you who have been reading these columns know I tend to chant “write things down” over and over like a mantra. “Write things down.” A terrific example of the usefulness of this advice is when you are messing about with open and alternate tunings.

Perhaps it’s easier for you to remember the really olden days, back when you were just starting to learn the guitar. It may or may not have been difficult to memorize the standard chord fingerings, but you undoubtedly had access to chord charts of one sort or another. Imagine if you had to start from scratch each time you picked up the guitar! Well, unless you have books or charts for open or alternate tunings, that’s precisely what will happen. If you have the foresight to make yourself a map you won’t find yourself wrestling monsters each time you change tuning. Even though they may seem mysterious and foreboding, open and alternate tunings are fun. “Map making” is not hard; it takes but a moment of your time and, most importantly, will help you to develop your theory skills. Really. Here’s how:

The Lay Of The Land

For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to work in just one of the numerous open tunings we discussed in the last column. And since I get to choose, I pick Open D. I’ll wait a bit ’til you get in tune.

Ready? Okay. First, we’re going to take a piece of paper and make a map of the Open D tuning. Across the top will be the frets and down the left column will be the newly tuned strings (open fret). We’re going to fill in the notes in their proper places and, to make it a tad more legible, I’m going use only the notes in a D major scale. I am also going to add the flatted seventh, which is C natural (as opposed to C#, which is the major seventh) for reasons that will hopefully become clear later on. When I’m done, it will look like this:

If you took the time to fill in all the notes (as we have in the 5th, 7th and 10th frets), then you’d see a major chord down each fret. Remember our capo discussion? This is an excellent demonstration of what we were talking about. If we put a capo on the seventh fret, we are now in Open A tuning. What about Open F#? Right, fourth fret. Amazing stuff, isn’t it?

Now, before we go figuring out our chords, we have to take another brief theory lesson. Remember our scale? Let’s see the D major scale:

Whether you’ve been playing for ages or just started learning the guitar a few days ago, you’ve probably noticed that certain chords keep popping up over and over again. “Why is that?” you might ask. Well, believe it or not, theory pretty much dictates what chords usually show up in any given key. I say “usually” because, as we know, theory is not a be all and end all. It simply examines what has happened in the past, what chord usage has traditionally been acceptable. Since anything goes in real life, it’s good to have a secure place from which to start.

The primary chords that one will use in a given major key will be major chords of I (the root or tonic), V (called the dominant) and IV (the subdominant). Secondary chords include the minor (and occasionally major) chords of II, III and VI. Also included in this group is the major chord with its root being the minor seventh of the scale. Occasionally, especially in rock, pop and country music (just to mention a few genres), you will run into a major chord based on the flat seventh of the major scale whose key you’re playing in. For our particular example in open D, this would be C major. You’ll read more about this in the upcoming lesson, A Before E (except after C).

So, playing in the key of D major, these are the chords we are most likely to come across:

(Two things I want to mention here - first, as usual we’re covering a lot of ground and it’s bound to be a bit confusing. That’s okay. Anything we brush on, we’ll be going over in depth in the (relatively) near future. Secondly, one thing that will be hard to avoid brushing against here is what I tend to call embellished chords. These are your run of the mill major chords with an additional note or two, usually the sixth or second (or ninth, as it is more often called). Open tuning lends itself to finding chords that are just a tad off beat. Sometimes it is necessary to work with what your guitar will give you. We’ll explore this in a bit…)

Okay, back to our guitars! I know the make up of a D major chord (I, III, V = D, F#, A), and since I know just how far I can stretch my hand, I can find a lot of different ways to put one together in Open D tuning. What I am going to do now is simplicity itself - I’m going to throw together a “do-it-yourself” tab chart. First, I go to the “map” we’ve made and pick out the notes I need (when I first started doing this, I’d actually circle to notes I wanted). Then I create my tabs by taking these notes (actually the frets at which they occur) and putting these in a separate chart. On the left column, I once again list my open strings. The right columns, read downward, will give me various sounding D major chords. You’ll notice that, again for the sake of simplicity, I’m leaving the three bass strings open in order to focus my exploration on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd strings.

On the last chord, I could also play the 12th fret of the 1st string, but again, I prefer the sound of this voicing. Likewise, since I enjoy the droning effect of the D’s and A’s, I also tend to play the 3rd chord with an open first string. It’s your call.

I’ll also put together tab charts for the other primary and secondary chords. Since I like to use open D’s and A’s, some of my chords will be embellished chords, such as Em7 and Bm7, which benefit from the open strings. Now, if I pick and choose from the various charts I’ve made, I can see that it’s pretty easy to form the chords I normally would use in any song in the key of D. Here are a few of the ones I use a lot: