Two weeks ago, we introduced a series of chord progressions that would allow you to voice the most common musical "sentence" in Western European music. In jazz, it's the equivalent to earth, wind, and fire, the elemental vocabulary, labeled "ii V7 I." It's not the first time we've covered this, but in our expanding series of 3-note chords, we wanted to equip you with some basic stock chord "grips."

Last week we injected some more colorful "landing" chords. You'll recall we wanted to simplify the voicings initially, sans extended harmonic extension bling. We took the liberty of adding some Major 7th and juicy Add 9 variations to give it some color.

It was all about Major modes, and you're probably already wondering, "what do we do about the Minor modes?"

Wonder no more...

Download PDF: Minor 'ii7b5 V7 I' 3-note Mandolin Chord Blocks

This time around we equip you with four stock patterns you can build off in the minor keys. As we mentioned before, you'll want to get them into your fingers, not just in the keys on the PDF, but start to move them around. Move them up two frets and you've got the next key up.

Em7b5 A7 Dm becomes F#m7b5 B7 Em
Am7b5 D7 Gm becomes Bm7b5 E7 Am
F#m7b5 B7 Em becomes G#m7b5 C#7 F#m
Dm7b5 G7 Cm becomes Em7b5 A7 Dm

Take the 2nd and 3rd sets and move them down two frets. If you have trouble memorizing or transposing in your head, write them out on blank mandolin chord template paper for yourself.

Next week we'll look at some songs in minor keys that use these so get the chord to chord motion in your hands.

Further
Major 'ii V7 I' 3-note Mandolin Chord Blocks
'ii V7 I' and 'ii7b5 V7 i' Home Positions
Vamps. Minor modal
m7b5 Chords
ii7b5 V7 i Minor Patterns

Posted by Ted at March 7, 2013 5:57 AM