Welcome to the Blues Chords Workshop Lesson 11.
Lesson 11 will introduce the 3rd voicing group on the bottom strings this time between the 9th and 12th frets. This week’s voicings have already been introduced in lesson 9 and therefore, should be familiar to you.
Click on the video below to watch the lesson.
Learning Aids
The TABs and chord diagrams for the Lesson 11 are presented below.
Primary Takeaways from Blues Chords Workshop Lesson 11
The main takeaways of lesson 11 are as follows:
1. Same chord shapes as Group D Voicings (Lesson 9)
Similar to the the middle and top string sets, the chord structures repeat themselves. This is only possible because all the chords are dominant 7th chords. Furthermore, these voicings are simply inversions of each other. Moreover, these voicings are the easier ones in the course and are therefore, easier to remember. As such, we can benefit from this by leveraging on this phenomenon.
2. Ring finger importance
Just as in lesson 9, the ring finger plays the role of common- and as movable-pivot in this lesson. We have already covered in lesson 9, the mechanics of sliding the ring finger along the string when changing between the I and IV chord. For this week’s lesson, we simply reverse this process.
Tips for Better Learning
Skipping One Group Voicing
As demonstrated in the video lesson, you can try jumping between Group B- and Group D- voicings. We can do this by simply sliding the chord shapes between the correct fret positions. Effectively, this skips over one entire group voicing (i.e. Group A) altogether.
Notwithstanding, we must continue to observe whether or not we are clashing with other players in the band. Again this may require lowering our guitar levels or playing shell voicings. Ultimately, we again have to use our better judgement because the bottom voicings can be muddy if used incorrectly. We usually will not encounter this problem as much with the middle voicings and probably not at all in the top voicings.