Bringing Life to Dead Chords: How to Make Any Chord Work with Steve Stine’s Guitar Lesson

Today I’m here with Steve Stein from Guitar Zoom to talk about what to do when you’re playing in a corporate setting and you come across a chord that doesn’t fit. We’ll be using the song “Hotel California” by the Eagles as an example today.

When we look at the song, we can see that it uses the chords B minor, D major, E minor, F sharp minor, G major, A major, and B minor. But some of these chords don’t actually fit in the key of B minor, so we have to figure out how to make them work.

One way to do this is to define the chords as being harmonic minor or perhaps a Spanish Phrygian thing. But again, that’s not the direction I want to take with this lesson.

So what I want to focus on today is what we can do when we come across a chord that doesn’t fit. The key here is to use the materials we have available. For example, if we’re in the key of B minor, we can use the chords from D major as well, since they use the same scale and same chords.

We can also use alternate voicings for the chords to make them fit better. For example, instead of playing a B minor chord, we could play a B minor 7 flat 5. This will give us a different sound but it will still work.

The main thing is to be creative and think outside the box. You don’t want to get stuck playing the same chords over and over again. Instead, you want to experiment and see what works for you.

So that’s it for today’s lesson. I hope you found it helpful and I’m looking forward to seeing what you can come up with. Until next time, keep jamming!

For more tips on how to play guitar and improve your skills, check out fingerstyle guitar and theory and notation on Stevestine.com. If you’re ready to learn more, click here to see what other guitar players are saying about improving their skills and learning on how to play guitar at GuitarZoom.com. Good luck and happy jamming!