Page 14 - Guitar Book

Using Minor Chords

When we played ‘Peggy Sue’ we used 3 major chords. What we are going to do
now is look at adding minor chords to our chord sets to make them sound a
little more interesting.

As we said before, minor chords give us a ‘down’ sound. Each minor chord is
relative to the various sets of chords that we have talked about. We are only
going to look at two variations for now. We will be using the keys of C and G.

Lets look at C first. The relative minor chord (The chord that goes with the
key) for the key of C is Am. I’ll show you how to find these out later when we
look at the Circle of Fifths. Using the chords we already have for the key of C
and adding the minor we can now produce a different song sound. Try this:

C Am F G

OK, I’m taking it that you’ve just played that successfully so we can now try
the same in the key of G. Our relative minor in this case is Em. Try playing
this:

G Em C D

We can also use 2 minor chords in the structure. Try this:

G Em Am C D

We can use the minor as our key note. Try this:

Am G F E

Finally, lets try just using minor chords. Try this:

Am Dm Em

The combinations and possibilities are endless when using our minor chords
and, especially for you budding song writers, you will discover that minor
chords can really add emotion to your songs.

Again, like the other chord structures, practice the chords above over and over
to help your fingers muscle memory find them more easily.

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