Originally Posted By: Teunis
Joanne, I think if there was only “right” chords there’d be no point to Roman Numeral or Nashville notation, after all why learn the chord pattern anywhere but the right place. It sounds better to use the correct “pattern” in a key that suits your playing and voice.

When playing in a band with just guitar, bass and drums I’d often go back to using open chords that allowed me to pick whilst strumming. As I understand it, some folks in fact wrote tunes and then played them in a different key to make things simpler.

Tony


Absolutely Tony! That is why I used to turn off the recording and just try to play the song according to my voice and my own (rather limited) guitar playing. I am always amused when people say to me "That chord is wrong, is supposed to be a "Bm" not a "D". Usually they are trying to make me look stupid, when in-fact they don't know anything about harmony.

I remember being completely astounded when a few years ago a guitar teach told me you can happily play a song that has all major chords using those chord's relative minors. What!!! He then proceeded to play Knocking on heaven's door using only the relative minors... well that opened up a whole new world for me. As mentioned by Mario above you can use the same approach for all sorts of other chords such as 7ths, maj 7ths..etc. The starting point is the I IV and V.

LyricLab – Where words become music https://www.lyriclab.net/