Thursday, February 16, 2006


I am good with the following chords : E, Em, A, Am, G, D, C, F. Are there any popular songs which deal with just those chords? Someone recommended some songs to me before but when I looked them up online they had complicated chords (and some involved putting that clamp on the guitar) others had a lot of obscure chords which are difficult to play like B chord.


An example of a song which is really simple to sing is the Beatles' "Hide your love Away" it just has the basic A, G, D, C chords and that is it. I am looking for more songs which just deal with those chords. Would someone be kind enough to point me to a few urls?




You should probably start with songs that you like/are familiar with/sound easy to play. Then look up the simplified tabs (.crd) on a site like www.olga.net or www.harmony-central.com (Search Results). If the tab has a few chords in it that you don't know, try just skipping those chords and picking up again when you do know the chords. If the tab has a "slash" chord in it (e.g. D/F#), pick one of the chords and play that instead of trying to combine the two chords (which is what a slash chord is indicating). If the chord is not a major triad (G7, E5) just play the version you know (G, E).


If the tab has a lot of chords you don't know, you might try transposing it (a little music theory will help here). Basically, most of the useful chords you know are in the key of C major (C Em F G Am). A very common rock chord progression is I-IV-V, which in C major would be C-F-G. If the song was in the key of E major (a very common guitar key), a I-IV-V progression would be E-A-B. If you can't play a B major chord, you could transpose the song to C major and play it as C-F-G.



If you are looking for examples, most blues based songs use a I-IV-V (C-F-G, D-G-A) progression. If you are a Beatles fan, your might try "Get Back" or "Revolution". Another very popular progression is I-VI-IV-V (C-Am-F-G), which is used in most doo-wop songs. Many rock songs use a variant of this progression, such as "Let It Be" (C-G-Am-F) or the chorus of "She Loves You" (Em-A-C-G).



Keep practicing.

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