Monday 30 May 2016

Basic Chords & Arpeggios for synths

 Some basic chords you can learn which are useful for lots of tunes:

C, F, G and A minor.

It's important to be able to play these chords in many different shapes and inversions.
Synths offer hundreds , if not thousands of different ways of playing these simple chords.

All these chords come from the C major scale.
 
The only difference between an arpeggio and a chord, is that in a chord, you play
the notes simultaneously, while in an arpeggio you play the notes one after the other. 
Arpeggios are sometimes referred to as broken chords. 

C chord
The C chord contains three notes – C, E and G




F chord
 F Major : F A C





The G chord
 G Major: G B D





The A minor Chord
A min uses A C E



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Chord progressions
A very basic chord progression is C, G, A minor, F
Another good progression is  F, G, Am, C, F G Am, Em

You can play these keys in any inversion.
The left hand may play just one or two of these keys to form the bass notes.

The right hand plays all 3 keys of higher notes

The lowest note played with the left hand has a big effect on the whole sound of the chord.
It's often the one its named after  (the root note).
This is a kind of a default but you don't have to always follow this rule.

Practice , practice, practice.....

Many thanks to Bill and Jordan for their great tutorials around which
these notes are based:
 
Of course once you have got these under your belt you can think about
layering arpeggios of these chord notes over their root chords

1, 3, 5 ... remember these numbers 
They belong to the Fibonacci Sequence.
 --- welcome to the world of the arppegio.
 
The 1, 3, 5 pattern is known as a triad.
It makes the most simple chords. 
The C major, the F chord, the G chord and the A minor chord are all in the
basic 1,3,5 sequence.

Links
 

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