How Chords Sound

[Wally]

I would find it really helpful to read something on how chords sound and are traditionally used. I know my majors, minors, and 7's, but I'd like to read something about where augmented, diminished, sus4 and others are used in contemporary music.

I think I read something about this on a page at cyberfret, but I can't find my way back.

Anything on this subject would be much appreciated.

W.M.

[cyberfret]

sus2 and sus4 chords can be used freely (most of the time) as substitutes for major and minor chords. They just have a little ambiguous sound (neither major or minor) and also sound a little better with distortion than major and minor chords do. They are often used as decorations of a major and minor chord. You might play a D then a Dsus2 then back to D. Just to add some motion rather than just staying on a D the whole time.

Augmented chords are often used as a substitute for 7 chord. So if you play Gaug instead of G7, it just gives you a little more tense sound before it resolves to a C or a Cm chord.

Plain 3 note diminished chords are not very common on the guitar. Most of the time when people refer to a diminished chord on the guitar, they are talking about a diminished 7 chord. One function of a diminished 7 chord is as a passing chord. C C#dim7 Dm D#dim7 Em. You can fill in the whole step gap between most chords with a diminished 7. This creates some tension, and chromatic motion between the chords.

Those are just a couple of ideas, there are certainly more uses for these chords. I don't really have a lesson yet on something like this, and off hand I do not have a link to another site that would go into more detail.

--Shawn