Music Lesson: Chord Progressions and Warm-Up

Before we get into the music and the material, let's go ahead and warm up a little bit. I'm going to take one of the chord arpeggios we're going to cover and I'm going to run this as a shape up the neck.

Warm-Up Exercise

• Stretch Out:
  • I'm going to stretch out my hand and play one four.
  • Move up one fret: one four.
  • Move up one more fret: one four, one four.

So I'm just stretching out my hand. We'll learn a little bit more about that chord later. That's called a diminished chord, and we'll cover that and many other chords in the four-note chord section.

Adding a Seventh Chord

Now, if you're wondering if there's more to life than just roots, thirds, fifths, and triads, you're right.

What we're going to do now is:

• Add Another Note: We will add another note to the top of each of the triads, creating a seventh chord.
• Each of these chords has different sounds, and we'll use them in a lot of our tunes that we're going to play later. We'll certainly use them in the two band tunes we'll look at in this lesson.

Finding C Major Triad

So let's go ahead and find the C third fret on the A string.

• As we were looking at in lesson three, there's my major triad: root, third, fifth.
• There's that movable shape: 2, 1, 4.

To create a major seventh chord, I will add a B natural on top:

• Root, third, fifth, seventh: C, E, G, B.

Notice I have a fingering pattern that I can use; it's a movable shape: 2, 1, 4, 3. That will work anywhere on the bass.

Playing C Major 7

Let's play that C major 7 a couple of times. Play it with me:

• 1, 2, 3, 4.

What I was doing was playing the arpeggio. If I were playing the chord, it would be all the notes together on the bass. That can be a little muddy and is not terribly practical for a bass line.

So, just like we worked on with the triad bass lines, I'm just going to run one note after the other:

• Root, 3, 5, 7.

When working on the bass lines, you will see me use all four notes out of the chord, but I'll just be playing one at a time:

• Typically, I'll start with the root (safest choice).
• The second safest choice is the fifth.
• The third safest choice is the third.
• The most interesting and unstable sound for a major seven is the seventh.

Dominant Seventh Chord

Okay, now let's look at a dominant seventh. This is sometimes also called a seventh chord.

To change our C major seven to a dominant seventh, I'm just going to take that B and:

• Flat it (move it down a half step). This will be a B flat.
• The tones I'm playing are C, E, G, B flat.

Major vs. Dominant Seventh

Notice the difference in sound here:

• Major seventh chord: [Play sound]
• Dominant seventh chord: [Play sound]

You hear a lot of dominant seventh chords in funk, rhythm and blues, and blues. As a matter of fact, we're doing a James Brown inspired tune. You'll hear a lot of it in that.

Fingering for Dominant Seventh

The basic fingering I'm going to use for that is the major triad 2, 1, 4, and then I'm going to add 2 on the top of it:

• 2, 1, 4, 2.

Play that with me. We'll play this twice:

• A quarter note equals 61, 2, 3, 4
• C, E, G, B flat: 2, 1, 4, 2.

Just like the major seven, that's a movable shape. Anywhere I go on the bass, I can play a dominant seventh chord or a seventh chord.

• If I put my hand down at random, that's a D flat. Here's a D flat 7 chord.
• I'm going to put it down at random again, G. That's a G7 chord.

These shapes can be very, very helpful.

Minor Seventh Chord

Now, let's add to one note to the minor triad that we used in improv.

• This minor triad was root, flat 3, 5.
• Remember, one of our shapes was 1, 4, 3.

I'm going to add a flat 7 on top of it. That becomes a minor seventh chord.

Fingering for Minor Seventh

So my fingering will be: 1, 4, 3, 1. The notes are:

• C, E flat, G, B flat.
• The chord function is root, flat 3, 5, flat 7.

Playing the Minor Seventh

Let's play that two times:

• 1, 2, 3, 4.