How To Play Guitar
Learn The 3 Chord Trick For Guitar
The 3 chord trick is a great way to learn a lot of songs very quickly.
In every key there are 3 main chords – the Tonic, the Dominant and the Sub Dominant and played together the from the 3 chord trick.
The tonic chord is easy to remember. If you are in the key of C, the tonic chord is C major, if you’re in D the tonic chord is D major and so on.
The sub dominant is a bit trickier. You will need a scale chart for this one.
The sub dominant chord is always the same name as the 4th note of the scale in the key you are playing in. So in the key of C the sub dominant chord is F.
The dominant chord is the last of the three. Again it’s not too difficult. It’s got the same name as the 5th note of the scale in the key you’re in. In the key of C the Dominant is G major.
Once you know these three chords you can transpose songs between keys. Look at the examples below.
- Key of C – C (Tonic), G7 (Dominant Seventh), F (Sub Dominant)
- Key of G – G (Tonic), D7 (Dominant Seventh), C (Sub Dominant)
- Key of D – D (Tonic), A7 (Dominant Seventh), G (Sub Dominant)
- Key of A – A (Tonic), E7 (Dominant Seventh), D (Sub Dominant)
Say you want to play a song with the chords C, G7 and F (Twist and Shout is a good example), but you can’t play the F Chord. You can tranpose the songs to the key of A.
Instead of C you play A, G7 you play E7 and F you play D and now you can play your song, albeit in a different key. If you really need the song in the same key you can fix that also.
If you have a capo, just count the notes between C and A (it’s 9). Put your capo on the 9th fret of your guitar and play A, E7 and D. You are in fact playing in the key of C.
October 23, 2008 at 7:57 pm | Learn Guitar Chords | 2 comments
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