Ha, how fitting that this post happens to be the 7th tip.

Okay, I was typing this post and realized that this is one of those posts that is probably impossible to explain with just words. As I don’t want to thouroughly confuse everyone, the best way to learn about seventh chords online is to visit our handy dandy musictheory.net site, specifically this lesson. Before you visit that particular lesson, though, familiarize yourself with basic intervals and basic triads.

So now that you’ve learned from a much better source than me on this one, let’s take a look at what you might use these various 7th chords for:

• V7 or dominant 7 chord: Very helpful for changing keys, playing in place of the vii dim* (in C, the vii dim* is made up of B-D-F, the V7 in C is made up of G-B-D-F; add one note on the bottom and you have a completely different sounding chord that can be used for the same thing!)
• min7: A great chord to use as a substition for the IV (four) chord, particularly the ii7 chord. As with the V7, the ii7 and the IV share notes (in C, the IV is F-A-C, the ii7 is D-F-A-C). This is particularly helpful when you’re writing music and you can’t move yourself out of using I-IV-V and vi.
• maj7, half dim* 7, fully dim* 7: All of these chords are used extensively in jazz music. If you’d like to learn to be a better jazz player or you want to give your playing a bit of a jazzy flavor, learn how to use these.

There are way more ways to use 7th chords, but that really would require me to teach a theory class to you! Next time: how to use theory plus your ear to learn songs.

*dim stands for diminished. Check out the lessons on specific intervals at musictheory.net for more information on dimished intervals. By the way, I have no partnership with that website…it’s just the best online website for music theory that I’ve come across and wanted to pass the word along 🙂

What happens to you when your worship leader says something like, “Just play something nice while the pastor is praying” or “when I’m introducing this song, vamp something from the song until we’re ready to go?” Do you freak out and think, “How do I play something nice with no music…and what in the world is vamping??? Help!!”

There is a way to play something nice without even planning ahead of time, and no, vamping does not have anything to do with older Anne Rice novels.

What is Vamping?

Earlier we looked at building the basic chords in any key, the I (one), IV (four), V (five) and iv (six) chords. With these chords placed in your musical tool belt, you can create “something nice” on the spot without any music. You do this by vamping a progression of a combination of those four chords.

Vamping means to play something over and over again. Vamping can be used to extend an intro or an outro to a song. It can be used to let someone solo on an instrument or create a space of instrumental music in the middle of a song that the worship leader can use to continue to lead with speaking during the song.

Creating Chord Progressions

So how do you create a chord progression that you can vamp with? Here are some ways:

• Find the built-in chord progressions. Is there an intro to the song? Figure out the measures of the intro and play it over and over again. Memorize that progression and the next time you’re in the key you can use those chords.
• Play I, IV, V, I over and over. It’s a little bit boring and predictable, but it will do the job until you’re used to something different.
• Understand the natural progression of chords. As obvious as it should be, we miss the fact that scales have a definite pattern to them that include each note’s chord: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1. So learn to play the scale progression of I, ii, iii, IV, V, iv, V7 (we substitute this chord instead of the vii..more on that in a future post), I.
• Listen, look, learn. Listen for progressions in recordings that you have of a certain song. Look for progressions as you play songs. Learn those progressions and use them the next time you’re asked to vamp.
• Learn progressions in different keys. Once you’ve learned the intro to a song in G, transpose that same progression to Bb, then C, then A, etc.

Changing Time Signatures

Be careful that you are following the time signature as well while you vamp. It’s a little bit tricky to get into a song if you’ve been vamping in 4/4 time and the song is in 3/4 time! Trust me, I know from experience on that one! So be careful if you’ve just played a 4/4 song and you’re asked to vamp the intro to a 3/4 song. Take a breath, count in your head and make sure you’re going to be playing in 3 instead of 4!

What are some good chord progressions you’ve used for vamping music?

Amazingly, one of the most basic concepts of music theory doesn’t seem so basic: key signatures.  I am constantly running into people who either a) don’t know how to tell what key they’re in or b) know what key they’re in but consistently forgot to add the sharps and flats in the key signature.  Before we look at the steps to figuring out how to find the key signatures, let’s realize that the absolute best way to know what key you’re playing in is to memorize what every key signature is so that you can tell at a glance what key your in AND get comfortable playing in all of those keys so that you won’t miss the notes in the signature.  Visit musictheory.net for some helpful practice on key signatures.

Step one: figuring out the key.

There are several ways to figure out what key you’re playing in.   The most basic way is to look at the first and last note of the song and determine from that.  If the song starts on an E and ends on an E, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re playing in the key of E.  That’s not the case all the time, however, so let’s figure out the no-mistake ways to find your key.

Sharp keys (keys with sharps in them):

Find the last sharp in the key signature and go up a half step.  That’s the major key your playing in.  It’s that simple.  The key of D has F# and C# in the key signature.  Going up a half step from C# brings you to D.

Here’s the catch, though: remember the relative minor chord we talked about in tip #4? It’s possible that you might be in that key instead of the major key.  A few ways to tell are to look at the first and last note or chords in the song.  You can also play the song and listen to whether or not it sounds more joyful or more somber.  If it’s more somber, you’re in a minor key.  So to find the minor key, first find the major key, then go down 3 half steps (minor 3rd) to the relative minor and there you have it.  As I mentioned earlier though, it is much more effective to memorize all key signatures and relative minor keys of each major key so that you instantly know that D major and B minor have the same key signature.

Flat keys (keys with flats in them):

Find the second to last flat in the key signature. That’s your key.  In the key of Eb the signature is Bb, Eb, Ab.  The second to last flat is Eb, thus your key.  The one exception to this is the key of F, which only has one flat.  We can also find flat keys by going down a perfect 4th (5 half steps) from the last flat in the key.  So, since Bb is the only flat in the key of F, and the last flat, going down a perfect 4th brings you to F.  The same applies for the relative minor for flat keys.  Once you’ve found the major key, go down a minor 3rd (3 half steps) to find the relative minor key.

Memorize the Key Signatures

Again, it is much better to figure out every key signature and memorize them so that you can know them in an instant.  The more you familiarize yourself with how key signatures look, the quicker you’ll be able to tell what key you’re in.  The more you familiarize yourself with how keys feel as you play them, the more comfortable you’ll be playing in those keys.

So, we’ve looked at basic triads.  We’ve looked at inverting those triads.  We’ve also looked at weird chord suffixes that can help us extend our chords a little bit.  Let’s look at the other most common chord in popular music: the relative minor or vi (six) chord.

Finding the Relative Minor Chord

Each major key signature has a corresponding (relative) minor key with the same signature. You can find the relative minor of a major key in two ways:  count up six steps beginning with the tonic (first note) of the scale.  So, in the key of C, we would start with C and count up six steps to A.  Building our basic triad (A, skip, C, skip, E) gives us a minor chord now, instead of the major chords we looked at earlier in the week. This chord is root chord of C’s relative minor key, A minor.  A minor has the same key signature as C major, no sharps or flats.

The other way to find the relative minor is count down a minor third (or 3 half steps) from the first note of the scale (not including the first note).  In the key of C major we would count down B to Bb/A# to A.  We’ve landed on A, which tells us that A minor will be the relative minor of C major.

Using the Relative Minor Chord

So why do we care, as worship leaders?   For one thing, the vi (six) chord, which is the same as the root chord in the relative minor key is found in almost every single worship song there is.  It is good to know how to play it.  Secondly, the vi (six) chord can act as a sort of “trick” ending (the fancy term is “deceptive cadence”).

Because the I (one) chord (in C, C-E-G) and the vi (six) chord (in C, A-C-E) share two notes, they can often be used interchangeably.   If the song ends on the root note of the key (in our case, C), either chord could be played.  If the vi (six) chord is played, the ear realizes that the song is not done yet, because the music did not end on the root chord of the key, even though the melody ended on the root note of the key.

This is especially helpful when a worship leader wants to repeat the last phrase of a song, but wants to add some variety.  Instead of ending on the I (one) chord and repeating the exact same thing, the worship leader has the band “trick” end on the vi (six) chord and then repeat the last phrase, ending on the I (chord)

Whew.  That was a lot of info!  Hopefully it all made sense.  Leave questions and comments if it didn’t.  Also, for more visual learning and some fantastic training excercises, visit musictheory.net.  I highly recommend this great, free site for training yourself in music theory.

One of the most common questions I get when working with musicians who aren’t used to playing chords is “what does that ‘sus’ or number mean after the chord?”  Let’s take a look:

Most of us are used to playing the basic chords that we looked at in the last two days, but what happens when you run up against something like Csus or Cmaj7 or C2?

Those three suffixes (sus, 2, and some type of 7) are probably the most common suffixes you will see in most praise and worship music.  The easiest way to figure out these chords is by looking at the numbers.

If you see the chord C2, think logically.  In the C scale, find out the second note of the scale, which is D, and add it to your C chord. You now have C, D, E, G.  It’s that simple.  In order to make the chord sound more open, however, eliminate the E from the chord, leaving you with C, D, G.  This chord gives a nice, warm sound to the music.

So, if C2 means that you add the second note of the scale to the chord, a chord with a 7 in the suffix must mean what?  You got it!  This does get a little bit tricky as there are several types of 7 chords that can be played.  I will go into much more detail in a future post, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s stay within the key signature and figure out how this works.

When you see Cmaj7 written out, do the same thing as C2.  Count up to the 7th note of the scale (B) and build the chord accordingly.  C-E-G-B.  You now have a maj7 chord.  One caveat to this is that maj7 chords can only be build on the I (one) and IV (four) chords if you are staying within the key signature.

So what about ‘sus?’  There’s no number there! Fortunately, most of the time ‘sus’ is used, it is shorthand for ‘sus4.’  There are exceptions to this, but this is the most common use of ‘sus.’  So, just as before, count up to the fourth note of the scale and add that note.  C-E-F-G.  Here, however, you must eliminate the middle note, E, from the chord.  ‘Sus’ is short for suspended, telling you that a note is suspending and wanting to resolve.  By playing C-F-G, the chord now wants to resolve itself to C-E-G.  Sus4 chords are a great way to add some interest to the end of a phrase.  While staying in the key signature, this chord works with the I (one) and V (five) chords.

Experiment with inversions with these chords as well!  Tomorrow we will look at the relative minor chord, or the VI (six) chord, the fourth most commonly used chord in popular music.

Read Practical Music Theory Tips #4 – Relative Minor Chord