Hey there, if you're new here I'm Tomas from Real Guitar.
Today I'm on day 17 of my 30 days of guitar coaching series
welcome. Today I'm going to show you a great exercise that I use with students
all the time to learn their seventh chords but I'll
tell you right from the start there's a bit of an ulterior motive here.
This exercise is one of the best I've found
to train my students ears to hear when a song is changing
keys so we're going to do a little bit of music theory first.
Before we do that I want to mention I'm not going to spend a lot of time
on actually fingering the chords. If you don't know some of these seventh chords
I'll put a link to other videos that actually spend more time teaching you
the fingering to the seventh chords. I'll also include
a free download on my blog to a complete chord chart
with all the chord diagrams and the exercise written out
so with that let's start off with just a little bit of music theory.
We're going to start with a simple scale I'll start with a C major scale.
Now I'm going to number each of the scale degrees and we'll start with
1 2 3 4 5 6 all the way up to 7. You'll see
the C on the C scale is number 1 and D number 2 and so on. Now I want to build a
chord on each of the scale degrees. So now the first chord would be a C
chord and so on. We're going to call that chord
by the number now. C chord will be the one chord. The
G chord will be the 5 chord. You guessed it.
Whenever you hear in the song the 5 chord
going to the one chord it in general establishes the sounds of that key
especially if it's a one to a five quarter one. So for example in
this case it'd be a C chord to a G chord a 5 chord back to C
chord.
I've left it with a feeling of that's home that's the key of the song.
Now that's okay but if you really want to make it stronger
change that 5 chord instead of just from a regular major chord
to a 7th chord. Another name for that is a dominant seven.
It's different than like a major seventh or minor seventh. Don't worry about that
for now. What we're looking for is something that looks like the letter
with a 7, next to it nothing else. In this case G7 so listen. It really
makes it strong. I'm going to go to G7 now.
The seven chord has a lot of tension and it naturally pulls back to the
one chord or that home chord. This exercise is nothing but a series
of 5 chords with a seventh added going to the
one chord and then it changes up. Changes that one chord to a 5 chord because
it adds the 7th and then goes to the next one chord.
Along with being an exercise to practice your 7th chords and get comfortable
with them you're also practicing them in a way
that they're likely to be used. In this case training your ears to
identify them and to be able to learn songs faster
that way. And to make the most of this, we're deliberately only using the keys
that are most popular for the guitar, the 5 keys.
If you're new to this or you'd like to review it some more, check out my video
on guitar chord families. Okay now we're ready for the practical
part of this lesson, the playing part. Now that we've got the theoretical out
of the way, I'm going to divide this exercise into two sections.
Now if you're brand new to this and maybe you don't know some of the chords
start with the first section, get comfortable with that and then add on
the second section. If you know all the chords and you just
want to go for it do the whole thing. We're going to start with the E chord.
We're going to go to B7 which is the 5 chord of the key E
and back to E. We've just established the key of E.
Now we're going to change the E to E7 with signals
change of key to the key of A.
Let's just play that much. Start with E one strum and don't worry about tempo
for now. Go to B7
now back to E
change that to E7
and to A now. Now going on from there we're going to
change that A to A7. You're starting to see the pattern
and now we're off to D
and that's the first section. Let's do that whole first
section starting with the E chord. Hope you got your guitar out.
Doing it with me will make it stick much better.
You need to go get? Okay, go ahead. I'll wait.
Turn off the video. Okay you're back, good. Here we go E
go to B7 and back to E. Now change that to E7
off to the A chord and don't worry if you finger the same
way as me it doesn't matter any way that works for you.
Now I'm going to A7
and that changes it to the key of D. Good. Feel free to practice that until
you can at least go from one chord to the other
and memorize that little progression and then come on back and we'll do the
second section. Okay section number 2. We're gonna
start on that D chord for the second section
that's where we left off with the first section. Now change that to D7
and that signals a key change to the key of G.
Finger the G chord any way that's comfortable for you.
I'm gonna use the 3 finger G with the pinky. For me,
this is going to be the easier change to G7 which is the next chord
so let's do that much D, go to D7 now, to G
and I already gave away the next chord change, it's going to be G7.
For me that's just putting the first finger down taking the pinky off. If you
do a 4 finger G and you want to switch like that
that's fine really. Here we go G7. That signals a key change to the key of
C. Okay let's play just that much from the beginning. Start with D.
Ready, go. I'll call it out D, going to D7 now
to G, G7 to C.
Can you guess what the next chord is? If you said C7, you're right.
C7, I just put my pinky down to make a C7. Now we're going to F, any form of F
bar chord partial bar that you want to make is fine or one of those kind of
GDF that aren't really a full F but don't have a bar, that's fine.
I'll use the bar chord. I'm comfortable with that.
We're going to go back to C7 kind of nail that key.
We're in the key of F now. C7 is the 5 of the key of F
and back to F. Get a double whammy on the F
chord so to speak. So that completes the second
section. Not so bad, huh. Let's do it from the beginning of the second section. The
whole thing. Starting with a D chord. Here we go. Strum
D now to D7, going to G
G7
off to C
then change that to C7
and to the F which is the one on the key of F.
C7 is now the five chord and back to one F and that completes the
second section. Okay, now we're gonna put the two sections together and I'm gonna
just play them through once all the way. I'll go slow.
Feel free to either watch if you're not ready to do the whole thing
or to play along if you think you want to give it a shot. Here goes
ready go E
B7 going back to E to E7
A
A7
to D D7
to G. Now change the key to D7. It's in the key of
C
C7 makes it key of F. Go to the one chord F, back to C7 and back to the F.
Not bad. So the best way I think to approach this
is to learn the entire exercise first without any
strumming or worrying about speeding up or slowing down tempo in other words.
Learn the first section. If some of the chords are new for you practice the
chords separately, put them together that alone would be a
great exercise if some of the 7 chords are new for you.
Then learn the second section same way put them together and then get to where
you can play most of the time all the way through without
too much stopping. Then start adding some tempo even
very slow at first matter of fact I recommend very slow at first
and just try to force yourself to change chords on time. When you can do that
pretty much start speeding up the tempo to up the notch.
And the other thing you can do is to start adding a strum.
I like to add a very simple strum just down,
down, up and then change. That starts making it feel more like how you're
going to use it in a song. I'm going to do it once through all the
way with that strum either to give you a model or something to practice along
with. We'll start with the E chord. I'll do the count of 4 - 1
2 3 4 starting on E
to B7 and back to E, now E7 A
A7 D and D7
G7 C almost done C7
F C7 and F.
Now there's 2 ways that can help you to memorize this
exercise. The first point is obviously every time you play a chord like the E
chord you're going to end up playing the seventh version of it so E
to E7 then it goes to the next key. How do you figure out what that next key
is? Of course you can just memorize it by route.
But one way is to look at a chart of the circle of fifths. See if you're on the E
chord and you look at that chart the next key is going backwards around
the circle A and then from A the next key going
backwards around the circle is D and so on and the second way to
memorize it I think even simpler is just to count
4. So in other words you're on E you change it to E7 the next chord is
4 up E F G A so you're on A , you change that
to A7 4 more A B C D
Okay, I need more fingers. Thank you for joining me on this 30 day
guitar coaching series. Hey give me a thumbs up if you
appreciate what I'm doing. Also I want to ask you a question.
Do you find this kind of little tidbits of music theory helpful?
Let me know in the comments below and if you'd like to know more about that
let me know also in the comments and I'll make sure to make more videos
around that. I'll be back again tomorrow with day 17. Hope to see you then.
Bye.