7 Adaptable Guitar Chords Progressions

guitar chords progressions

If you are at the stage of beginning to write your own music, then it is not uncommon to want to create your own original chord progressions. However, in the case of guitar chords it is close to impossible to create chord progressions that have never been used before. When you are learning guitar chords, guitar scales and chord progressions, you will also begin to learn songs. It is then that you will notice patterns in the music that you play and you’ll start to recognise chord progressions that feature regularly in a variety of songs. However, it is important to bear in mind that this does not mean that by using them your music will be any less unique or in any way inferior. Continue reading “7 Adaptable Guitar Chords Progressions”

Top Tips for Speedier Changes of Your Guitar Chords

guitar chord change

When you first start out playing the guitar, there are many different skills you will need to master. You will need to learn guitar chords, how to tune your guitar using a guitar tuner online and how to play guitar scales. You will also need to learn how to change from one chord to the next too and this can prove to be one of the trickier skills to get to grips with. However, with practise and effort, it is something that you will master. Here are the top tips for how to perform speedier chord changes:

Learning the chords
To make smooth chord changes, you must first be confident of the chords. You will need to learn the strings you use and the finger positioning for all the guitar chords necessary. Until you are confident with each of the guitar chords, it is unlikely you will be able to make a smooth transition between them. Learn each one individually and practise until you are confident at playing that particular chord before moving on to the next. Continue reading “Top Tips for Speedier Changes of Your Guitar Chords”

Where to Start – A Beginners Guide to Guitar Chords

virtual-guitar-chords

If you are planning to master the art of playing the guitar, the first thing you will need to learn is the most commonly used chords. Once you have learned these, you will be able to play many different tunes on your instrument. You can learn how to play these chords online so, before you begin, why not try practising virtual guitar chords on your keyboard to learn the different sounds each chord makes. Once you’ve got your ear tuned into the sound of each you can begin to learn how to play them.

Here is a beginner’s guide to guitar chords:

E Minor (Em)

When you learn guitar chords, the first one to learn is Em. The small ‘m’ stands for minor. This is the most commonly used chord and it will play a big role in many of the songs that you will learn along your journey. Continue reading “Where to Start – A Beginners Guide to Guitar Chords”

10 Tips for Crisper Guitar Chords

better guitar chords

How you play your chords is an important part of making the sound you want when you are playing a tune. One way that you can improve the sound is to play your guitar chords in a crisper fashion. But, how do you go about doing that? Here are ten tips that will help you get there:

1) Practice

Practice is key in getting sharper guitar chords. If you are a beginner, then try practising with virtual guitar chords online first. You must first learn guitar chords before you can improve the way you play them, so master each of them in turn. Practise just two chords at a time until you can achieve a crisp sound.

2) Use your fingertips

You will get much clearer chords if you use your fingertips instead of the pads of your fingers. Bear this in mind each time you position your fingers for a new chord. Continue reading “10 Tips for Crisper Guitar Chords”

Guitar Chords – 8 Common Chord Progressions in Rock

guitar chords

Depending on the genre of music you want to learn how to play, when you listen to the structure of famous tunes you will find that some are a lot more common than others. In fact, when you listen to rock music closely, you will realise that many of the tunes use exactly the same guitar chords over and over again.

In theory, you can use any combination of progressions and chords to make a song, but you will soon realise that certain progressions sound better than others. This is why they are used so much by professional musicians and songwriters. If you want to play rock music, here are the eight most common chord progressions you will need to learn how to play in order to bust out a jam with the best of them. Continue reading “Guitar Chords – 8 Common Chord Progressions in Rock”

2015 Upgrade – new look and new site

Am very pleased to announce the new Chordbook.com website major site upgrade. Its been a lot of hard work but think its really worth it. Here are a few of the new features.

New Look and Feel

Have done a complete redesign, responsive to desktops, phones and tablets, a shiny new logo. Expertly redesigned Acoustic and Electric guitar visuals. Toyed with light or dark background but eventually felt that the dark was easier on the eye after long periods. A huge thanks to Craig Russell from Red Sun Design, Glasgow for the new design and theme and general amazing creative input.

Chordbook.Com logo

The user interface is now much cleaner and more intuitive. The guitars more realistic.

Guitar Chords

The guitar chords section has expanded greatly. As well as the new design, there is now a Pick button, so you can hear the guitar pluck away the chord and repeat.

The ‘MyChords’ feature for saving your chords to your device has been given its own page.
You can do all you did before but its much easier to delete, re-order and play about with the chords once they are in the sequencer.

There is now a whole series of pages on the different guitar chord types with examples.

New Guitar Samples

We completely upgraded the sounds you here on the site, by creating our own sample sets for acoustic and electric guitar.

Learn Guitar

A brand new section, to help guide guitarists through all the normal hurdles one comes up against when getting better at an instrument, we have some brand new guitar lessons on video.

Also we have several new articles about some essential basics of chords and music theory.

Guitar Settings

The flyout menu on the right allows you to choose your guitar, acoustic or electric, set your volume, set the speed of strumming and picking the guitar and choose between left or right handed guitar. These features work across the whole site.

Support for iPad and Tablets

This was a very popular requested feature and we now are pleased to say we fully support iPad’s and Tablets with our 2015 website upgrade.

Guitar Web Applications

The “web app” pages, like guitar chords, scale and tuner fit very nicely onto an iPad in portrait mode.

Flash Not Required

Flash is no longer required, but still supported.

Mobile Devices

The site is now fully responsive for desktops, tablets and mobiles. On the “app” pages I am going to have to do more work to fit the controls into the screen, but that is coming soon!

 

Guitar Audio Samples

Had a great time creating the new samples for the site. Here’s how I did them.

Acoustic Guitar – Martin D28

Martin D-28 Acoustic Guitar

Tried to do this in my home studio, but until you make your first sample set, you don’t realise how quiet the environment needs to be, or how much background noise, however light is going on. Even tried doing this in early hours of the morning but just one car going past on the main road would mean a ruined take of a string as it got quieter.

Eventually decamped to a local studio and finished off there, even then we had to retake a few when somebody closed a door heavily in building next door.

For this particular use, unlike a normal sample set, I just had one set volume. Tried to be as consistent as possible, but think there is a certain “character” in the mix of sounds we got.

This is well seasoned (over 30 years old) and played in guitar as you can see and really pleased with the end result.

Electric Guitar – Fender Toronado

This was much easier, just DI into my recording gear, then season with some amp plugins and various eq and fx at the mixing stage.

Mixing/Mastering

audio waveform

Both acoustic and electric guitar sample sets were expertly mixed/mastered at Surrealis Sounds Studio in Berlin by Jörg Surrey. Job done.