Pastor Mike Plays At A Show Sponsored By Louisville Station WFPK, 91.9 FM
In today’s churches, the guitar is coming to dominate the landscape in the same way that the piano and organ once did. It’s important that as church musicians we give great care and thought to our guitar playing - everything from chord voicings to tones - so that the instrument is a servant of the congregation, not the star and not the distraction. Each week on Sojournmusic.com, Pastor Mike Cosper will post a guitarist’s feature, which will range from articles to links, online lessons and interviews:
Part Three: Adding Color to Guitar Parts
In most church situations these days, there’s usually more than one guitar playing. Whether it’s any combination of acoustic or electric instruments, there is a real potential for the two instruments to clash - fighting over sonic space, warring with each other over tuning and using the same voicings. They also have the opportunity to disappear if the two instruments just play the same thing.
The cure for this common ailment is for the lead guitarist to get familiar with options available to them beyond the basic chord voicings most guitarists get comfortable and familiar with. Below, you’ll find several suggestions for opening up new options for chord voicings for a lead guitarist. Let us know if this is helpful - we can continue these tips as part of this ongoing series.
Get Out of First Position
Any serious guitarist needs to know the basic CAGED chords. If you aren’t familiar with CAGED, check out the attached document. In it, you’ll find a chart of bar chords (where one finger “bars” several frets to make up several notes of the chord).
As you see from Example I, the CAGED system allows you to play a chord in any position:
I’ve also included Example II: a chart of bar chords using all the CAGED shapes walking up the scale in the key of G, including a slash chord voicing that you’ll find very useful if you don’t know it already. (I hardly use the G-form bar chord, but use this G/B form all the time.)
To learn bar chords, start by working up and down this scale. Hold each chord for a four count, then shift to the next. After a couple of weeks, you’ll start to do it more easily, as your muscle memory develops and your hands stretch. It’s like riding a bike - once you have these in your pocket, you’ll use them all the time.
Learn Some Subsitutions
When guitarists look at piano music, they’re often dismayed by the crazy variety of chord shapes tossed at them - like Em9+13, or Bm7-5. Often, we simply resort to the simpler voicings of major and minor chords and hope no one notices. What we miss out on is the additional color these odd voicings bring to a song.
In Example III, you’ll find some chord voicings that work well in the key of C and provide more color. Using open strings helps to create ringing, musical sounds. The voicings are actually easy to play, and the space it will create in the music transforms a song.
I’ve included a chord chart for “Come Thou Fount” based on this set of voicings.
Less is More
Miles Davis famously said that the notes he didn’t play were the most important ones. When you’re playing with a full band, you’re the second (or third) guitarist and there’s a bass player, you have a lot of freedom. Get away from roots, power chords, and open position chords as much as you can. The bass player will (hopefully) be covering the low end, the other guitars will have the core of the chords, and you can begin to color the music more with more interesting voicings. Andy Summers from the Police did this better than anyone. By opening up his chords and trusting the bass to cover the low end, he created beautiful guitar textures and some of the most memorable songs of his generation. Give it a try, and let us know what you think.
See Part One in this Series: Jim Campilongo on the Lost Art of Melodic Guitar Playing
See Part Two in this Series: Pursuing Excellence with Acoustic Guitar
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Forgive the computer geek language, but if any of you are having trouble pulling up the CAGED files using Firefox, switch over to Internet Explorer and you’ll be able to access them. Google Chrome is also working fine with the CAGED files. Not sure what the deal is with Firefox right now.
I’m a cellist, not a guitarist, but it is way too easy to stick with the bass line. I need to practice to get more comfortable with different keys and different chords to get out of the grasp of the comfy bass notes and play with color. Thanks, Mike… confirming what I’ve been thinking but not doing.
I think this is a great resource for worship musicians… I would love to see you guys get into some further explanation on how the electric can compliment and color the sound of the ensemble. Thanks!