Today, please welcome a guest writer.
The following article has been sent to me by my old friend John Burns. John plays the cello in classical ensembles and the banjo in traditional jazz groups.
We met a few years ago, when we both lived in Cambridgeshire; and occasionally we had a go at playing music together. John taught me a good deal, especially about chords and about the cello. Like me, John is fascinated by chords and chord patterns.
I think John's article will be of great interest, especially if you share our fascination with chord structures of the old popular songs and also if you are learning to play the banjo.
Thank you, John.
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Hello Ivan,
I am enjoying everything that appears in your blog and have been particularly struck by your series on chord accompaniments to all sorts of tunes because, as I think you will be aware, I am fascinated by chords also, especially being a "chord player". The series has made me think of how I became aware of, probably, the first of many chord progressions and accompaniments.
My first experience was being taught the "three chord trick" (in one key only) as a child by my father on the ukulele. (He also played me lots of orchestral music on an ancient gramophone and I have been fascinated by orchestras ever since.) This, and the sounds produced by these chords remained with me until I was in my teens at school and somebody decided to start a skiffle group. I didn't have an instrument but not wanting to "miss out" I borrowed a banjo-mandolin (or banjolin?) from a lad who didn't know how to play it and, having re-tuned it as a ukulele, I set off on my chord playing career!
I suppose the three chords sufficed for most of our skiffle tunes but the next year we advanced to the heady heights of a jazz band. I bought an ancient five-string banjo which I set up with four strings and joined the band. The trumpeter with the band was very musical and could work out by ear the most suitable chords for the tunes we played, and he gradually passed on this ability to me.
I had already become aware that, out of the three chords of the "trick", C, F & G7 in the key of C, almost all tunes ended in G7 followed by the key chord C. After a while I noticed that the pattern D7 - G7 - C would turn up frequently, and not long after that I found that a huge number of tunes ended with the sequence A7 - D7 - G7 - C. I began to think of these chord progressions in reverse order, so to speak, so that I would regard D7 - G7 - C as a "three chord" ending and A7 - D7 - G7 - C as a "four chord" ending or progression, regarding D7 as the third chord from "home", i.e. C, and A7 as the fourth, etc.
All the different types of chord, e.g. major, minor, seventh etc. are produced by specific "shapes" of the fingering on my banjo and these progressions became indelibly imprinted on my mind as specific sequences of these shapes, dependent on which inversions of the chords in question were being used, and could be carried out without requiring much thought as to their execution.
It was not long before another chord came to my attention which often preceded this progression. This was the chord E7 (producing in my mind a "five chord" progression) which seemed to flow naturally into the sequence I had already learned.
This five-chord sequence seemed to turn up almost ad nauseam, Basin Street Blues being a good example. However, the use of this expression is unfair, as this chord sequence, despite turning up so frequently, is in my opinion extremely satisfying on the ear, perhaps because it is so natural and "logical", and I never seem to tire of it. There are several tunes of the 32-bar A-A-B-A variety in which the sequence is used in the B or "middle eight" section as well as in the A section. Five Foot Two and Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone spring to mind, where to my ears the middle eight appears to sound completely different from the A sections, both in character and harmony, despite being based on the same chords!
I subsequently learned that this sequence of chords forms part of the Circle (or Ring) of Fifths. This (at the risk of "teaching Grandmother.......") is based on the fact that the most satisfying end to a tune i.e. G7 - C (known as a "perfect cadence") consists of a major chord with an additional note two semitones below the root note: G B D F, which falls naturally, to our ears, on to the chord C, the root of which is the interval of a fifth below (or a fourth above, just to complicate matters) the root of the previous chord. This cadence has been listened to by most of us since (probably) before we were born!
However, if the new chord, in this case C is also played in its 7th form, i.e. C7, our ear tells us that it needs to continue on and fall again on to the next chord a fifth below, i.e. F, and if instead we play F7 we feel it needs to go on to Bb.........and so on! So the sequence can in theory continue until we get back to the beginning again.
The composers use it in a clever way by beginning the sequence some way back round the Circle so that it finishes very naturally on the key chord of the tune; so I suppose my idea of calling A7 the fourth chord from home is another way of saying "four chords back round the Circle from the key chord".
A few years ago I made another discovery: the use of the chord on the seventh degree of the scale, i.e. B when we are playing in C. You mention this in one of your articles and comment how unusual it seems to use such a chord. I have always thought this also. However I noticed that sometimes it precedes the five chord Ring of Fifths sequence which I have been talking about. One example is Mister Sandman and there are others which I can't recall at the moment. It suddenly struck me one day that if we go back round the Ring sequence we get C G D A E and, lo and behold (to use an appropriate seasonal expression!) B.
So our Chord on the seventh degree is just another step back round this well-used progression......... and I only discovered it recently! No wonder this and all the other chord sequences I've learned over the years are so fascinating!
And now one final point relating to chords on my banjo. These, as I have said, are produced by specific "shapes" of the fingering for each type of chord. Consequently if I play C major, followed by D major and then Eb major, all I need to do is move this "shape" up two frets from C to D and then one further fret to reach Eb. I've often thought how much less clear this series of shapes appears to be on a keyboard, at least to a non-player such as myself. This is due I think to the dreaded "black notes" which as far as I know are only found on keyboards and related instruments such as xylophones etc.
If you play the same three chords in closed position (where the "shape" is most obvious) on the keyboard then D major appears to my eyes not very like C major and Eb major is different again from either of the other two. Furthermore if you play D minor it looks to me to be the same "shape" as C major. All very confusing!
The "shapes" idea is also lost, in my limited view, if the chords are spread over the keyboard, as they often are - but no doubt to an experienced keyboard player this is probably not the case.
On banjo or guitar the spread of the chord is not generally an option, especially on the banjo, except for certain chords which can be played using a mixture of stopped (or fingered) strings and one or more open strings, the latter usually forming the lowest part of the chord. The spread of all other “normally” fingered chords is limited by the tuning and the physical limitations of the positioning of the fingers. (On my banjo the chords have a spread of one octave plus two or three notes.)
Other examples of tunes that can be satisfactorily played with only three chords include Pass Me Not O Gentle Saviour, Mama Inez, Nearer My God to Thee, the old Mississippi gospel number Mary Wore a Golden Chain and Take My Hand, Precious Lord.
