[00:03] methods for finding interesting combinations of just two chords and really show you how two chords can Inspire your creativity and really that it doesn't need to be complicated you don't need a lot of chords and a lot
[00:20] of Harmony to make a song interesting I've also made a free pdf that shows you all the chord combinations with all the shapes on the guit so grab that now in the show notes and
[00:32] you can follow along as we're going through the video and you can join me as work through these four different methods for finding interesting two chord combinations so we'll start pretty easy but still interesting and we'll
[00:47] progress through in layers of kind of increasing complexity but still easy and still accessible the first method is to combine two chords inside a key that we
[01:01] combine two chords inside a key that we have never used in combination together before so you might think well I write songs all the time in the key of C or the key of G or the key of A but the suggestion here is find two chords
[01:14] inside the key that you've never actually just paired together on a loop so we may have all written a song in the key of C but when was the last time you key of C but when was the last time you paired E minor with f on a loop and that
[01:29] that's it there is no C don't play C or don't play it yet just Loop these two don't play it yet just Loop these two [Music]
[01:45] chords see I don't think I've ever done that in a song and it makes me want to do it immediately the really important thing to know and keep in mind when you're using this technique which on the surface of it seems quite simple right
[01:59] but there is a way in which this can go wrong and I don't want you to do that so the way to do it right is to actually know that we're in the KFC and make sure that the melody notes you're singing on top of these two
[02:12] chords are drawn from the KFC and not from some kind of E minor scale or mode because the problem there is that F major chord is not going to
[02:24] sound good if we're singing notes from an E minor scale right so here is my key of C C is a kind of weird key for me to sing was very very low very high sing was very very low very high so so I'll sing it there
[02:42] to kind of sing over and initially the way I do this is just noodle noodle little babbly mumbly things over a two chord combination just to get the melody chord combination just to get the melody chord um combination together
[03:17] sounds like it's kind of floating over the top but that's kind of the point so it's simple but it's interesting which is what we're going for so another combination of chords that you will hear in certain songs like the song Need You
[03:33] Now by Lady antab Bellum is a combination still in the KFC but not with the c chord so in that song they combine the F major chord with the a minor chord so in the KFC we're talking about the four major chord and the six
[03:48] minor chord now if we sing that Melody over the top of those chords the same thing happens it sounds right but there's a level of kind of tension and floatiness to that is really really interesting and
[04:03] appealing and then paves the way for the chorus to kind of really bang so the chorus to kind of really bang so the melody to that song goes like
[04:20] that f for a c chord you can really hear that the melody is is really a C major Melody [Music]
[04:32] but you know they don't play the C chord and there's something really really interesting and compelling about that combination of chords so number one is find all the chords in a key and pick two that you've never used together
[04:47] before what would D minor and B diminished sound
[05:08] staying dionic by which we mean we're still just going to stay using cords inside a key and inside a major key we're not going crazy we're just adding in some new elements to those familiar chords so in number two what we're going
[05:25] chords so in number two what we're going to do is add in some of the Dion 7th what do we mean by that all that means is we're adding on another note on top of the Triad the seventh but we're making sure that that note is still in
[05:39] intimidated by the music theory CU there's no need to get intimidated by the music theory at all in the PDF that you can download I have written out the dionic 7th chords in a couple of different keys and you can just see them
[05:52] right there and pick them out and play them and the whole idea is they'll just they'll sound good together that's the idea because they're all made from the same seven notes of the key but what you'll see is even just turning some of
[06:05] the dionic chords into seventh chords opens up totally new flavors and textures and colors so if I'm in the cave e for example I could play the one and the four the E and the a major but play them as their dionic sth so that's
[06:21] going to sound like this [Music]
[06:35] the key of C and play them as they're seven so I'll pick uh two and seven so I'll pick uh two and [Music]
[06:52] given to the songwriters currently enrolled in our 8we songwriting Sprints which I'll tell you a bit more about later on is to use the chord combinations to start to suggest song ideas so a song can really start
[07:07] anywhere it can start with lyrics it can start with Melody the key here is to let start with Melody the key here is to let the chord combination suggest to you the chord combination suggest to you mood emotion tone memory scene situation
[07:21] or even just image whatever bubbles into the landscape of your mind as you're playing these chord combinations follow that so the idea is to let the chords start to suggest to you what the song might actually be about and it's a
[07:37] really fun and intuitive way to start the songwriting process and by starting to combine chords you've never combined before hopefully it will start to suggest to you song ideas that have never occurred to you before and if
[07:50] those 8 week songw writing Sprints that we run five times a year I've put a link check out right now a song comes to mind that that uses two dionic seventh chords
[08:02] beautifully um and that song is the song groovin by Marvin Gay um which I play in this key it's probably in a different key
[08:15] chord and the two [Music] [Music] chord on a Sunday
[08:31] I couldn't get away too [Music] for finding interesting two cord combinations amongst a palette of just
[08:46] chords in a key is to experiment with some inversions so chord inversions are really fun cuz they really again just show a totally different color to familiar cords so um an example of that might be if I'm getting the key of
[09:01] G so I'm playing a pretty vanilla G chord there well I might go to the D chord and that's kind of a basic D chord shape uh but if we use
[09:13] inversions particularly of the D chord it can really change things a lot so this is one of my favorite inversions of the D chord on the guitar so what we're doing is we're putting the third of the chord in the
[09:28] inversion of a chord in this case I'm playing F in the base of D and this is what it sounds [Music]
[09:48] inversions is it allows this sort of more close more close [Music]
[10:00] [Music] nice I could even experiment with some inversions of G itself and again this requires a little bit of practicing on the guitar and accessing inversions but you know there are many other videos on
[10:15] our Channel where Benny has shown some really interesting inversions and different ways to play basic qu and you can check those out in experiment but can check those out in experiment but here is the next inversion of a G chord
[10:27] even if I were to start there it's so pretty pretty ooh and what I've done there is I've gone from G major to G minor by
[10:40] just moving a single finger on the base so I've gone non diatonic but playing with chords it's really evocative it makes me want to start writing a song the fourth and final method in this easy version of finding
[10:57] interesting two chord combinations is to start to add on tensions and extensions to our dionic cords and again this is just spreading the color palette even
[11:09] further so it's not just seventh we're starting to add on ninths and six and starting to add on ninths and six and 11s starting to really add in complexity to the basic chords but even though they're more complex than the Triads
[11:23] like I said it's really not that difficult if you just take a little time so um let me show you some of my favorite combinations and I really encourage you um to experiment with them as well in your own songw writing so let
[11:36] me show you a really easy one in the key of G so I'm going to start on a G chord and a very very basic one couldn't be more basic I just have my finger on G and I'm playing some open strings there what I'm going to do is I'm going to put
[11:50] these two fingers down here and when I do that keeping my finger on G in the base is I'm adding on a six and I'm adding on a four so this
[12:04] a six and I'm adding on a four so this turns into a G6 sus beautiful combination of chords these are two shapes that I really love and
[12:17] when we put them together they are chords in a specific key and I I'll tell you what that is after I play the chords so here we go
[12:46] so even though I started this combination of chords on this D kind of minor chord with attention and then went to this F chord with a tension this combination of chords is dionic the cave F so we could call this a song in the
[13:01] cave F let's try another one this one is much more easy on the fingers all right so this is a variation of a basic E major chord which I love it does require a little bit of Pinky action it's popping that pinky up there to give us
[13:15] an ad nine but a really beautiful sound and when we give a nice full strum just so nice
[13:40] so definitely check out some of our other videos where Benny shows you different ways to play really simple chords in inversions and with tensions shows you some really beautiful shapes that you can combine together into two
[13:54] chord combinations to really Kickstart the songwriting process and if songwriting Sprint please check out the link in the show notes happy songwriting link in the show notes happy songwriting guys I'll see you next time bye