Chord Scales – Using Chords Within a Scale & Understanding Basic Harmony

About Bill Palmer

BILL PALMER is a guitarist, composer/musician and an educational author. His style is a mix of rock tones, ambient sound-scapes and jazz-influenced harmony.

Along similar stylistic lines to Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson but with a voice all his own, Bill’s debut self-recorded album “Outlines” (ToneFreak records 2007) has garnered much critical acclaim from both music industry press and insiders and has been described as:

“Classic Satch style shred…” Australian Guitar Volume 64
“Face melting runs, complex arpeggios…” Rave Magazine 2008
“Your material is awesome, really great stuff…” Mark Holden – Aust. Idol Judge
“Great playing, writing and arranging – awesome!” T.J Helemerich (LA based producer)
“Bill Palmer’s “Outlines” is a guitar pickers heaven…” Manly Daily
“Tone, control and melody – epic sounding….” Australian Guitar Volume 64
“Plenty of heat, the songs are both catchy and original…” Manly Daily

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Chord Scales – Using Chords Within a Scale & Understanding Basic Harmony

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Scales?

A scale is a an organized collection of notes. A scale can have as many notes as 11 the “Chromatic Scale” for instance but typically, the majority of scales have 7 different notes.

In the case of E Major, those 7 different notes are: EF#G#ABC#D# and the scale then ends on the same note it started on “E.”

When most guitar players think of scales, they imagine singlenotes played one at a time and sure, that is one such application of scales. However, a scale can also be applied by playing groups of notes from within the scale.

Chords & Scales? Yes You Can!

When 3 or more notes are played at once, we call that grouping a “chord.” Within a major scales, these chords ALWAYS follow a set pattern that are based off each note of the scale: Major, minor, minor, Major, Major, minor and lastly, diminished.

This means that in the key of EMajor, the chords based off the E, A and B notes will yield Major chords. The minor chords will fall on the F#, G# and C# notes and that leaves D# as the designated diminished chord.

So a “chord scale” is simply the chords from a scale played in a successive manner. We can apply this to acoustic guitar for a number of different chord voicing possibilities and further, it’s definitely helpful to know these shapes and ideas as it gets you out of the rut of “stock,” run of the mill chord voicings and shapes.

What we’ll also be doing is using particular open strings as “commontones” or “pedal tones” that give these chord shapes a “shimmer” to them that you just don’t get with barred or closed position shapes. Let’s take a look at some ideas in the key of E Major:

If you play through these, you’ll hear a continuity that you just don’t get with regular closed position barchords. They’re also a nice option have up your sleeve for the purpose of multitracking guitar parts when it comes to recording.

These kinds of shapes work well in the keys of D and A Major, take a look:

Without a doubt, you’ll find these chords helpful in understanding theory and how it applies specifically to guitar. And as bonus, you’ve got some great new “sounds” to toy with.

C and G Major chords also work but the minor chords can be a bit of a stretch so I’ve intentionally left these off. Instead, I’ve written the 3 major chords from each respective key which you can take a look at here:

At the end of the day, it’s all about options and while you may not like every single one of these chords, hopefully there are a couple that you do really like.

All of these voicing options can be arpeggiated as well which is where you pick each string individually rather than strumming. Experiment and see what works!