Building on the Core!
In the second week of the songwriting challenge, Dan focuses on using his theory knowledge to add some very tasty 7th notes into the basic chords from last time. If you're just joining here, we highly recommend you watch the first in the series here to get a feel for what we're trying to achieve!
Dan builds up the chords from their basic triads by adding in the 7th from the key of A Major. Harmonising a Major scale to create 7th chords gives us the following:
Maj7, Min7, Min7, Maj7, Dom7, Min7, Min7b5
Check out our free Theory Lab Course for an in-depth look at how to build these 7th chords.
Playing Those Chords
Now we have our chords, we need to work out where to play them. As always, our CAGED system opens up the neck and allows us to play these chords anywhere!
Check out our CAGED courses free online to get started with the CAGED system using triads. Here's how Dan plays the chords in the video:
Tasty Fills
Dan once again draws on his CAGED system knowledge to inject some Hendrix-Esque lead fills over the chords. In this case, He's going for A Major Pentatonic Shape 2 over the A Major 7 Chord and F# Minor Pentatonic Shape 1 over the F# Minor 7. Check out our Jimi Hendrix Course for more on this style. For now, here are the shapes:
Putting It Together
Now we've got a far more unique sounding song with some catchy fills over a really solid chord progression. Dan layers up a few more alternate voicings for the chords to give a really lush sound to finish things off. As always, Dan is using his CAGED system knowledge to play these different voicings. Here's the tab with the final parts:
Have a bit of fun with your own song - use your CAGED knowledge to add some flavour to your chords and try a few pentatonic licks over the chords to write some hooks!