Guitar Chord Creativity Part 2

 Little Known Ways To Create Hours Of Beautiful Music Using The Same Two Chord Vamp On Your Guitar!

by Simon Candy

This video article lesson is the second of a 3 part series on guitar chord creativity.

Today we are going to extend on the strategies I taught you in part 1 regarding how to create amazing music using just one chord on your guitar. If you have not checked this lesson out yet, then I highly recommend you do, not only because of all the cool things you will discover by using just one guitar chord, but also because of the understanding it will bring to what we will be doing in today’s lesson.

And what is that I here you say?

A chord change! Yes, today we will be dealing with two chords.

I will be running you through the same simple 4 step process of creating amazing music with a single chord on your guitar, as you did in part 1, only this time with an E chord. Better still, you will also learn how to connect this with your A chord from part 1, to create breathtaking music with a simple two chord vamp on your guitar. 

This simple chord vamp will allow you to generate literally hours of awe inspiring music on your guitar that will blow the socks off anyone who cares to listen! It’s amazing what you will be able to do now you have a chord change, albeit just the one chord change for now.

Before we begin however, remember that these lessons in this video series are all about musical creativity. So turn off the analytical part of your brain, and lose yourself in all the amazing sounds you are about to generate on your guitar with just two chords. Keep in mind the child at Kindergarten with the big sheet of white paper and the paints and crayons.

Be that child!

If you have no idea what I am talking about then you need to check out part 1 of this series on guitar chord creativity first, don’t you :)

5 Steps To Creating Beautiful Music On Your Guitar With One Chord Change

Below I will take you through the 5 simple steps required to develop the ability to create hours of beautiful music on your guitar with a simple chord change. The first 4 of these steps will be the same as we did with our A chord in part 1 of this lesson. Therefore I will only cover these briefly, as I assume you have worked your way through that lesson.

Watch the video too for a more detailed explanation and demonstration.

Step 1: E Chord Shapes

Here are the four E triad chord shapes I want you to learn:

* the 4th shape is really the same as the first shape only an octave higher

Below are the diagrams for each chord:

Step 2: Open Strings (High Drone)

Next you simply add the open second string by removing the finger that is on this string resulting in the following chord shapes:

As was the case with the A chord in the part 1 of this lesson, we will also include the open first string with our E chord shapes.

This creates a really cool open string droning sound on the top of each chord, as we had with our A chord. This is a very important ingredient to the beautiful music you will be creating on your guitar with these chords very shortly.

Below are the diagrams for each chord:

Step 3: Open Strings (Low Drone)

To achieve a full sound with our chords, we will also include the drone of the low E string like so:

This provides the lower end that now makes what you play sound full and complete.

So simple, yet so effective!

You have the bass, the chords, and in just a moment, the melody component.

These are the 3 layers of music.

Below are the diagrams for each chords: 

To become more familiar with these shapes, let’s apply some strumming as you did with the A chord in part 1, only to our E shapes this time:

And picking through the notes of the chord shapes separately, like so:

What you are doing already sounds great, but there is more!

Step 4: Adding Notes To Chords

Now it’s time to add notes to our existing E chord shapes to create an amazing amount of variety to the sounds we can get from each.

Let's start with notes that sound more consonant becasue they are in key:

Here are all possible notes, in and out of key, that could be added to each chord on the top string of your guitar:

Some of the sounds above are quite dissonant, but as I pointed out in the first part to this lesson, dissonance is not a bad thing. In fact, music must have dissonance of varying degrees or else it would be quite boring. It’s your ability to control the dissonance that is in exact proportion to how well it sounds.

Be sure to watch the video for detailed demonstrations and explanations of this.

Step 5: Pairing Chord Shapes

Ok, now we have the all important 5th step that will give you access to some beautiful sounding music on your guitar.

Up until this point in time we have repeated what you were doing with the A chord shapes in part 1 of this lesson. However now we have two chords, we can expand massively on the sounds we can get on our guitar using them. All you need to do is link them together by position.

Here are the E chord shapes from this lesson and the corresponding A chord shapes for each from part 1:

Chord Pairing 1

Chord Pairing 2

Chord Pairing 3

Creating Beautiful, Amazing Music Using A Simple Two Chord Vamp

If you thought you had an amazing amount of sound under your fingers with a single chord in part 1 of this lesson, which you did, wait until we introduce a chord change which we can now do.

The following are simple 2 chord vamps using our E and A chord shapes. The ideas are the same that we were doing with the A chord, only now including the E chord.

Chord Vamp Example 1

This first example uses the first chord shapes for each of the E and A chords: 

Chord Vamp Example 2

Here I am creating a two chord vamp with the second shapes for the E and A chord:

Chord Vamp Example 3

Finally, here is another two chord vamp using the 3rd shape for each of the E and A chords:

Mixing Your Chords Shapes Together

Once you get the hang of playing two chord vamps using the E and A chord shapes via their corresponding position, you can then mix them up creating an almost endless amount of awesome, awe inspiring music on your guitar.

Here is an example similar to the one you hear me play in the accompanying video:

If you think the above examples sound great, wait until we introduce a third chord and the possibilities that are created through doing so in part 3 of this creative guitar chord lesson series!

Learn how to use chords in your guitar solos to create even more amazing music