Blues Chord You Need To Know

[ChordGuy]

Heres a quick easy chord for blues

This is an Augmented chord, usually written as E+ or Eaug (E is just for eg., can be any note) There are lots of ways to play it but I include just one to get you started. This is often concidered a “one horse chord” because it may seem to have just one use. Also called the “and then” chord, I’m sure your ear will tell you why!
It is made of the intervals 1 3 #5.

Eaug X7655X Ring finger seventh fret fifth string, middle finger sixth fret fourth string, partial bar on fifth fret with index finger.

Use it as the 5 chord just before the tonic chord. EG. play this Eaug then an A chord at the fifth fret. Try using it as an intro chord, just strum it pause and start a blues progression. “and then” 🙂 Augmented 7ths work the same but have the dominate 7 in them too.

Heres a link to a old blues done by Eric Clapton that has an aug. chord and as a bonus uses the same turnaround that Brian uses in his lesson on turnarounds. (Done on the keybords though)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWVsptT3gZ8 check others versions of the same tune, Bessie Smiths my fav.

Gordo

[Rickey]

Yep, The Allman Bros. used this chord often, Most notable in their live performance of Stormy Monday at Fillmore East in ’71. They were in G so it was a D+. If you arpeggiate the chord it sound like, time-to-be-gin. And back to the top. Beautiful chord. Thanks for posting this.

[ollie5000]

thanks for posting this, a nice finesse

[ChordGuy]

We can get some more mileage from this chord. Augmented chords are a symetrical chord, a diminished chord is as well. First I’ll do the how then the why for those that are interested. I do this in F, Caug wants to lead to F so we need a Caug.

lets take our chord form and play it at the third fret, this gives a Caug (C+), now move it up 4 frets to the seventh fret now its a Eaug. now four more frets to the eleventh fret, now its a G#aug. Four more and its the octave of the original Caug

Caug X3211X Eaug X7655X G#aug X11,10,99X

an examination of the tones will show something interesting, Caug has the tones C,E,G#
Eaug has the tones E,G#,C
G#aug has the tones G#,C,E
These are all the same notes in each! They are just a different sequence or “inversion”, They are “enharmonic”, different chords with the same notes.
therefore you can use them interchangably. You may want to use them to move to the closest F cord at that fretboard position.

So, move any augmented chord four frets and you have the same chord, root inversion, first inversion and second inversion. You may want to leave out the highest note in these chord forms, it just doubles the lowest note and may make it sound more like the actual E and G# chords.

Now we have a chord that could resolve to 3 different places, try the Caug position and play Caug to F, Then same Caug to A, then Caug to C#. Simply, any chord that is a one fret higher than any note in the augmented chord.

Heres a list of things we can do with this
1. play the forms in a sequence, keyboard players do this with chords alot
2. arpeggiate or pick the notes individually to make licks out of
3. pivot chord for key changes
4. change fretboard positions
etc.
Are we done? not by a mile. Try moveing these forms by two frets up or down the fretboard. I’ll talk about that in a later update, but give it a try.

Gordo

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