Hello, how you doing? Justin here.
Welcome to Stage 5.
And in this first lesson of Stage 5,
we're going to be checking out 3 new chords
and they're going to be A7, D7 and E7.
You'll be please to know they are a little easier
than the previous 7th chords we learned.
But hopefully your fingers are nice and limber
and ready to get some new sounds in your ears.
So let's go to a close up and check out these new chords.
OK, here's the first chord we're checking out today.
And this is A7.
Now this a pretty straight forward chord.
If you are used to playing a regular A chord,
then A7 is as simple as lifting off your first finger
and you've got A7.
Making sure, of course, that you don't play the thickest string
because that's got the little cross to it.
And we go through and check out the notes (plays)
The difficulty here is always getting the open strings
so making sure this second finger is exactly positionned
between the A string and the G string
or the 5th string and the 3rd string
depending on what lingo you like. (plays)
So sometimes that G string can be a little bit difficult : you get that
(plays) from that second finger.
so just, again, it's about using those fingertips (plays)
Same with that third finger, nice, sharply done (plays)
Now there is a little variation that you can also play for this A7.
If you've been playing your A chord like this,
with the first finger bar and you're digging that method,
you might probably find that doing that,
if you've got big fingers, is pretty difficult to get your A7.
So another common one is to use our little A mini bar chord
and then putting down the third finger
on the thinner string there (plays) on the third fret of the thinner string
so regular A mini bar, adding 3rd finger on the thinner string.
This is kind of your classic kind of blues one
if you're doing kind of Robert Johnson stylie stuff
or Clapton or something.
You'd probably tend to play A7 like this (plays)
A very hip little chord, that one.
OK, the next chord we are going to check out is this one.
This is D7 (plays), lovely sounding little chord.
I kind of think of it like it's a backwards D,
like these two notes are the same. There's your regular D
and the note on this string is just moved back two frets (plays)
We go to D7, if you look at a picture of it, it kind of looks like a mirror of the D.
It's how I remember the D7 or how I used to.
And so we're just starting 1st finger : 1st fret, 2nd string,
2nd finger : 2nd fret, 3rd string
and 3rd finger down on the 2nd fret of the thinner string, 1st string.
Pretty straight forward, the difficulty here again is making sure
that this finger is nice and pointed and not muting the second string.
So (plays) that's the string you want to check the most,
is the B string, 2nd string (plays),
remembering of course that we are not playing the thickest two strings.
And the last chord that we are going to look at
in this little segment is E7. Now there's a regular E,
if we lift off the third finger, we've got E7.
. . .
Again, really nice sounding little chord.
The difficulty again is getting this finger pointy enough (plays)
. . .
to hear that D string closely.
. . .
That's the fourth string there I am checking.
That's the hardest one to get.
The rest of it, if you can do it, you should find pretty straight forward.
Just, you might have a little bit of fun with that.
If you have too much fun with it or it's too difficult,
start with your regular E
and just simply add your little finger down here
. . .
in the third fret of the second string
and you've got another really, really cool way of playing E7.
So, there's a bunch more new dominant sounding chords for you to play,
dominant meaning seven chords.
So the big name for all of these sort of chords is the dominant seventh chord,
like an A dominant seventh, but it just gets shortened to A7.
So, just in case you hearing people calling them dominant chords
and you're not sure what that means,
dominant seven and seven by itself are exactly the same thing.
But they do have a different sound to major seven,
as you probably remember from our F major seven chord.
It doesn't have a very bluesy sound,
where all these seventh chords, dominant seventh chords,
. . .
they sound bluesy.
. . .
They've got that kind of real earthy blues sound to dominant seventh chords.
Very good ones for your ears.
You should definitely be doing your ear training or JUSTIN ear training stuff
to make sure you recognize the sound of those dominant chords.
Very useful.
So, those three chords we are going to make a blues in the common chord sequences.
So make sure you go and check that out.
But we've got a few other little tricks to teach you this lesson first.
So stay tuned and I'll see you for another little lesson very soon.
Well, I hope you enjoyed those new chords to check out.
They're all quite bluesy sounding, pretty cool I reckon.
It doesn't really matter which version of the different chords.
So, I've showed you two different ways of playing the A7
and two different ways of playing the E7.
You can use whichever one you like.
It's really a matter of taste, listening to the sound of it and going :
'Yeah, I want this sound in this song or I want that sound'.
Really, the quality of the chord, if it says A7 in the sheet music,
you can play A7 whatever way you like.
And it's still going to sound cool.
It's just a preference as to which sound you want to hear.
So, it's very important as well that you get this sound of the A7 chords in your ear,
not the A7, all of the seventh chords in your ear.
Now you'll often hear these seventh chords referred to as dominant sevenths.
So when you say A7, it really means A dominant seventh.
But we just assume dominant when we write A7.
So, if you see A7 or A dominant 7, then that's exactly the same thing.
Now, it's really important that you get used to the sound of this as well.
The dominant seventh chords have a real kind of bluesy sound to them.
They've got a lot of pull,
there's quite a lot of dissonance in the sound of the chords.
And that's very different to the sound of major seventh.
So, if you go back and listen to your F major seven,
you hear that it's got a different kind of - I'll just do it for you now actually.
If you listen to this (plays) it's kind of quite a happy sound
. . .
Where as the dominant seventh chords
. . .
is quite sharp. It's got a real
. . .
It's got a lot of pull in it
and a lot of that kind of 'aarrr' dissonance going on.
So make sure that you listen, do a little bit of ear training,
that JUSTIN ear training stuff
or whatever that helps you sort out the sounds of the different chords.
It's very important,
especially when you are transcribing and working out songs for yourself,
that you can hear the sound of the chord and go :
'Oh yeah, that's a dominant seventh chord or that's a major seven
or that's a minor nine chord or whatever.
So, as we're learning each of these new chords,
you should be trying to get the sound of those chords firmly in your ear.
OK, now we're going to have a little bit of look at
a very, very little, very easy bit of music theory.
See you in a sec.