Web resources for learning harmony

By Darrin Koltow [email protected] http://www.MaximumMusician.com

What web resources exist to help us understand harmony and guitar chords? Which free software exists to help us understand harmony? Where can you find resources to show you where on the fretboard to play chords and how to play them?

Keep in mind that you can think of harmony as a branch of the music theory tree. If you take that view, then getting better acquainted with music theory in general might help you understand harmony better.

Musictheory.net revisited For that reason, have a look at “Theory Made Easy” at this URL: http://www.maximummusician.com/theory.htm if you haven’t already done so. The super cool Musictheory.net, which is the focus of the article, gives you an approach to easily understand how harmony works. It shows you how harmony interplays with other slices of the delicious pie of music.

What if you don’t look at harmony and chords as just another music theory topic? How else can you approach the study of guitar chords and harmony?

Chord progressions Let’s look at harmony from the standpoint of *music.* That’s what we want the result of all our guitar practicing to be, correct? We want to make music, to play songs. And what are songs?

They’re chord progressions. Or, at least you can make understanding songs much easier by thinking of them this way.

Where can you go on the web to get a free education in chord progressions? Your first stop might be Moneychords.com.

Money Chords Moneychords gives you over 20 Popular Chord progressions to play and learn from, including over 75 lessons. Most sites give you just a handful of progressions. MC offers lessons on chords and chord progressions that musicians at every skill level can benefit from.

Before you explore the Moneychords site, it’s useful to know something about chord progressions. Otherwise, using what the site has to offer you could be like winning a free new car that you have to assemble yourself. Instead, take the time to dig some tips on assembling a practical curriculum to learn harmony and chords with.

Gotta know progressions If you want to play jazz, you’ll want to learn these progressions:

- The Blues progression (I-IV-V), and some of its variations, including the minor Blues (Moneychords link http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/Blues.html)

- Rhythm changes (http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/rhythmchanges.html)

- The great and powerful ii-V-I (http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/jazzprog.html)

- Coltrane changes (http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/coltrain.html)

If you’re into rock, you’ll instead focus on learning the I-bVii-IV (http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/classicrock.html), the Blues, and other progressions.

Keep these guidelines in mind when you visit Moneychords, because the site gives you a *large* selection of progressions, and not all of ‘em are going to be useful to you -- at least, not all at one time.

Linking away A great thing about Moneychords.com is that it gives you many, many progressions that music is actually made with. Its knowledge is comprehensive, and not just a few articles about one vamp, for example.

This treasure chest of chord info doesn’t all lie on one site. And that’s one of the reasons you can trust Moneychords. Rich Scott, the webmaster, does something that few guitar site webmasters do: he’ll give you links to other sites to learn from, without being preoccupied with his site’s visitor statistics.

Some of the other sites MC directs you to have in-depth articles and lessons on chords that the typical guitar site just can’t give you. One of these links once led me to a web site based in England that features a deep, academic-oriented book that relates chord movements to natural language (http://www.harmony.org.uk/book/chap2_part2.htm). I don’t know how Rich digs up this stuff, but I’m grateful that he has.

Besides different kinds of progressions, Moneychords gives you a glimpse into how all chord progressions work, and also how music itself works. There are specific links for Turnarounds (the last two bars of a progression that prepare you to go back to the beginning), Modulation (changing keys), song endings, cadences (the ends of progressions), Pedal Points (a single pitch repeated as chords change), and other topics.

Guitar.to If you’ve checked out WholeNote.com already, and think that nothing else the web has to offer you could amaze you, as far as guitar info goes, check out Guitar.to. You may be amazed all over again.

(Be aware that http://guitar.to/ is not a .com, if you’re typing it into your browser.)

This site has these chord tools for you to use. They’re all *mostly* free. (More on this in bit):

- guitar chord generator

- chord name finder

- tab generator

The chord generator does just that: you enter chord quality, root and other info using drop down boxes and other controls. The generator will show you where to fret the chord on the guitar. It has *many* options and features, and that’s the amazing thing. You can change the tuning from standard (ebgdae) to another tuning; and you can learn chords with colorful extensions, such as the 7#9, 7b9, minor 11, and others.

Options You can also choose the maximum fret distance you want the chord to cover. This will help you find those super easy chords that span 1 or 2 frets - - great if you’re a beginner, or your fingers are tired. Or, choose 4 and 5 fret spans for super hard chords, with literally impossible finger stretches, if you’re a total masochist.

Besides telling the chord generator the number of frets you want the chord to cover, specify what fret you want the chord diagram to start at. If you don’t like the results from a particular chord diagram, another drop down box will present another variation of the same basic chord. This is great if you find a particular shape hard to play and need an easier one.

If you’re a left-handed player, just click the “lefty” check box to get a mirror image of what right-handed guitarists use. This means you won’t have to waste time converting all those right-handed chord diagrams so you can read them. Cool feature.

The author of this applet, Jim Cranwell, goes way overboard in making the chord generator useful to you, by letting you save each diagram you make, and printing out the full set when you’re done. Man, this site is almost more WholeNote than WholeNote.

Chord name finder The chord name finder http://guitar.to/guitar/index.html is a useful tool for you to analyze a tune’s chords with. Or, let’s say you’re just shnoodling around, and come up with a really cool chord with these notes: E G and C. You want to find out what names you could put to that, to get hints for similar, cool-sounding chords.

You enter the notes into the chord name finder. It reports back three names. One of ‘em is “Em aug5.” You say, “Ew. Too hard to say and spell.” You look at the other names: One of ‘em is C major. “Ahh,” you say. “So the C major is a kind of weird version of the E minor chord.” Then, you tell all your pals about this, and get looks like you’re from another planet.

Online tab generator Guitar.to also has a tab generator for you, at http://guitar.to/tabber.html. Use this to notate music you’re composing, decomposing or transcribing. Change the tuning to any wacko combo you want.

Enter fret numbers on a grid, and they show up as tablature on another part of the screen. Enter bar lines, chords, and move forward and back. Add hammers, pulls, and other effects. Save your work and print it out. One nifty feature is the “auto Blues,” which creates a random Blues riff in any key you choose.

The downside One downside to all these applets on Guitar.to is the lack of sound. The only ways to get sound is to pay for the applets, or to make the music yourself, which is “how it ought to be” anyway. (Just call me the Rush Limbaugh of guitar). Another downside, with at least one of the applets (Chord Name Finder), is a nag dialog box. I’m not sure exactly how many times you’re allowed to use the applet, but a message box came up after I’d used it several times, preventing further usage of the applet.

The message box directs you to paid versions of the app, which runs on your PC without needing an Internet connection. At $3.95, the Chord Name Finder is a pretty good deal.

To beat the nag screen, you *could* remove the cookies the site deposits on your system. But, for a couple of reasons, I won’t explain how to kill the cookie Guitar.to gives you. One, it kind of goes beyond the topic of guitar stuff. And B), I don’t want to deny Jim Cranwell his deserved share of profits for the useful tools he’s provided.

Chord generator with sound Here’s another online chord generator for you that *does* have sound: ChordFind, at http://www.chordfind.com/. After you input the chord name, type and sprinkle color, the applet returns a chord diagram with a “midi” button you can click to hear the chord.

ChordFind doesn’t have all the features that the chord genner at Guitar.to has. You can’t specify the starting fret, and you can’t specify how many frets long you want the resulting chord to be. One thing you can do is click the Variations button to see all the common G7 shapes all over the fretboard, for instance.

One cool feature of ChordFind I didn’t see in Guitar.to’s generator is the slash chord maker. You can’t make every possible slash chord with it, but you can make some. You get triads C, D, E, Em, F, G, A, and Am, but that’s it. Still, it’s a good intro to slash chords.

ChordFinder is as hip to left-handed guitarists as Guitar.to is: it has a link to reverse the diagram so it makes sense to lefties: with the fret numbers ascending from right to left). Long live lefties.

Copyright 2002. Darrin Koltow. All rights reserved.

Deepen your understanding of harmony, chords and progressions with Guitar Chords (GC). GC shows you how to substitute and combine chords; play Jazz, Rock and Blues progressions; transpose songs; put chords to a melody; apply fingerpicking, alternating bass, arpeggios, and much more. Learn more about GC here: http://www.MaximumMusician.com/chordbook.htm Discover the best free guitar info on the ‘Net, turn your practicing into playing, and make music from scales and chords. Sign up for the free Guitar Study newsletter. Get free chapters of Guitar Chords when you subscribe at http://www.maximummusician.com/.