"Here are three chords ..."

You know the famous saying "here are three chords, now form a band!" - and Six Pistols gave exactly one tablature version of each (on an album cover). The important thing to them was to have something to say, even if the music was (or risked being) monotonous. It is an attitude, and it can be respected depending on truth and urgency of what you have to say with music. I am however adressing myself to music lovers - which does not exclude, but neither presuppose being a punk musician type of band person. Three chords is a good beginning, but do explore them! Not that I have - I never had a guitar long enough to start doodling around with each of the possibilities a chord gives you, depending on which strings remain silent and where you put a finger on its frets if it all. 0 stands for open string.

Ideally, someone who starts out with these three chords, in these positions, picks for each of the two voice possibilities either both together or one after another either way, then goes on to three voice possibilities, all three at same time, two together and one after, the three after each other, practising rhytmically every order there is, and so on for the four string possibilities, will acquire a fluency.

• The Three Chords:
  • C Major,
  • D Minor,
  • G, Dominant Seventh
• Study plan:
  • C and G7, two string possibilities:
  • add Dm;
  • C and G7, three string possibilities:
  • add Dm;
  • ajust by mixing four string possibilities into the play
  • G7, then
  • Dm and at last
  • C, so you have the possibility to use four string possibilities all along
  • without neglecting three string and two string.
    
    
  • practise each possibility by itself until you master it

Now, I am not a musician, just a theorist of music. You do the practise, you get the skill.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Paris/Place d'Italie
St Norbert de Xanthen
6-VI-2012