Write SWEETER Chord Progressions With The HONEY CHORDS
Do you want to write better chord progressions?
Are you sick of using the same boring 4 chord loops that have been used over and over again for centuries, like some kind of copycat?
But even better, what if there was a way to take even the simplest, most overused chord progressions and turn them into something that sounds brand new, bordering on revolutionary?
(If you think I'm just spouting empty words, go at the video below and listen to the basic chords at 1:21 and then their transformation at 1:58)
Well, there is a way, and if goes through a family of chords that I named "Honey Chords" because they sound so sweet.
But is that complicated to do? Is it going to require a PhD in relativistic quantum music theory?
No. It’s literally just a simple chord substitution!
In the video below I’ll show you what that substitution is and how you can use it to easily sweeten up your chord progressions.
Want more tricks for writing better chord progressions? Check out my Complete Chord Mastery guitar course and start writing way better progressions immediately!
Video Transcription
Hello, Internet! So nice to see you. Today I want to show you what I call the honey chords, because they are so sweet. Originally, I was calling them the sugar chords, because they were sweet, and then I discovered with extreme disappointment that another YouTuber has made a video on what he calls the sugar chords.
And then I watched his video, and with even more disappointment, I discovered that what he explains were just the drop 2 and drop 3 voicing of the 7th chord, which, yes, airs with, but they already have a name.
Why do you invent a name for chords that already have a name? That's... I mean, what manner of clickbait is that? At least the honey chords I'm showing you today don't have a name yet. And also, I'm telling you immediately, honey chords, it's not the official name, it's a name I gave it to them.
Okay, this other guy was never telling you the sugar chords, it was not the real name for those chords. I mean, but that's the modern YouTube. Anyway, let's just hear them. First, I'm gonna play them for you, okay, then we're gonna see exactly what they are and why they work, okay?
So, first of all, let's play a super basic chord progression, okay? I'm just gonna play a standard C, G, okay? And A minor and F. You could strum it, you could arpeggiate it, no problem. It's a super standard chord progression.
You find it hundreds of pop songs and it's probably been lifted from Pachelbel's Canon, but it's not a problem. It's just a standard chord progression. Now, I'm gonna play it with the sugar chord. There's more than one way to play these, so let's try this first.
That's the chord. I'm playing always the same chord progression, still playing a C, G, A minor, F. It's really nothing strange. But, of course, I'm playing them in different ways that... We'll have a look at that.
And then maybe this. I need to recalculate this when I'm playing it. There we go. So what am I doing? You may like this sound, you may not like this sound, but you cannot deny it. It's very sweet, hence the name, honey chords.
And if you want to call them differently, great. And if you find somebody else already gave them a name, please let me know. No problem. I didn't have to have precedence on that. What are those chords?
What exactly am I doing? Well, normally, let's go at the whiteboard, normally, the chord progression I was playing was C, G, A minor, and F. If I'm spelling out those in notes, C major is C, E, G, G major is G, B, D, A minor is A, C, E, and F major is F, A, C, nothing strange here, those are the standard triads.
Rather than playing the standard triads, again, I'm playing the honey chords. So how does it work? When I'm doing that, I'm keeping the same bass of the chord. So the lowest note of the chord I'm gonna play here, substituting C, will still be C.
The lowest note here will be G, the lowest note here will be A, and the lowest note here will be F, okay? But then, on top of this C note, I'm playing a different triad. I'm not playing a C triad, okay?
On top of it, I'm playing always the triad that is in the scale, we are in C major. But one fifth above the original root, okay? So, I'm playing a C, but on top of it, I'm playing a G major. major triad, G, B, D, okay, so that's a G major triad, okay, and the interval between, let me write this here, that's a G major triad, okay, I'm gonna just write G here in blue, and this interval here between C and G, it's a fifth, okay, so, always, always one fifth higher, okay, so, G, what is the note one fifth higher than G?
It's D, and then I am going to take the triad built on D in the key of C major, which is D minor, so D, F, and A, okay, and again, this interval here, it's fifth, it's a fifth, let me also write this, and this, so fifth above A, I have E, and then I'm just gonna write the triad built on E, on the key of C major, which is E minor, so E, G, B, And then here, F, the note F if above is C, and I'm gonna write simply the C major triad, okay?
So, those are essentially, you can notate that using the slash chord notation, okay? This chord here, it's simply, so rather than playing the original chord progression, I'm playing this, which is a G with a bass of C.
And then playing the G major, I'm playing a D minor with a bass of G. I'm then playing an A minor, I'm playing an E minor with a bass of A, and rather than playing an F, I'm playing a C with a bass of F.
There we go, okay? That's it. Those are what I call the honey chords, always essentially a bass and the triad, a fifth above, built on the note, a fifth above in this key, okay? You do these, it always sounds good, okay?
Now, there's more than one way of building that, okay? Because you could play the C note here, okay? And play this G, B, and D on string for B and D, okay? But I can also play this B, D, and G on the top three strings, okay?
Or I can play the C, say here, and the D, G, B here on the top three strings, okay? So there's more than one way of playing this kind of chords. And so, of course, you need to have some knowledge, okay?
You need to have some knowledge on where to find those triads around, because you cannot just simply learn the shapes, okay? Because you notice that if I go back to the whiteboard, these are major chord over a bass, but it's a minor chord over a bass, okay?
Sometimes the top triad, it's a major triad, sometimes it's a minor triad, in one case it's even a diminished triad, okay? So, you cannot simply just learn the shapes, you need to know what you're doing, okay?
Or, I mean, you can potentially learn the shape, why not? But they're gonna learn a lot of shapes, okay? Because there are so many possible voicings for all those chords, okay? I mean, that's a voicing, that's another voicing, okay?
That's another voicing. You can really, you can put your hand in many, many positions here and find different ways of playing all these. And right now, I'm also limiting myself to playing the top triads with the notes close by, but if I start thinking of the top triad and maybe separating those notes, You could find a very interesting voicing of all these.
Okay, those are the sugar chords. So, how do I use them in a real song? I simply take the original chord progression, keep the bass and change the top triad. Boom, simple as that, okay? I can change all the chords, I can change only some of the chords, okay?
I don't have to do one or the other, I'm not compelled to change all of them or to change only one of them, I can do whatever I want, okay? Often, for instance, you will not like, sometimes you will like the one on the fifth, built in the fifth chord of the key, sometimes you want.
So, in this case, you can just put a G7 or a G9 or something else and no problem there. Why it works? Why does it work? Well, that's because once you do this, you create a very interesting situation, okay?
You are creating essentially an extended C chord. If I'm putting an E note here, which is not there, okay? I will have a C major chord, C, E, G, and this will be the major seventh, okay? And this will be the ninth.
So, I will have a C9 with a major seventh. It's just another way of seeing all this bunch of notes. Now, since I don't have the third, you could call this a C9 with a major seventh with no third, but you can also call it a C major seventh with a suspended second because since there is no third, this nine becomes a second.
Now, this is when I'm thinking, really music theorists, we really had to go with such complex name for something that is so simple to create, but hey, that's what we have. But essentially, every time I do that, I am not playing the third of the chord because the third here will be an E.
Her D would be a B. third here would be a C, and the third here would be an A, and so I never play the third of the chord, but I'm always playing the fifth of the chord, the seventh of the chord, which could be a major seven here, or a dominant seven here, okay, a minor seventh, and the ninth of the chord, okay?
So all those chords, I could have called these, not G, but a bass of C, I could have called these C major sevens a second. I could have called these, okay, I could have called these G9, no, third, or G7sus2, okay?
I could have called these A7sus2, and I could have called these F major sevensus2, okay? Big deal, okay? It's, again, I'm just taking the triad, a fifth above, every time you do it, it sounds wonderful.
So... When would I use these? Okay, let's say I would not use those chords for an aggressive death metal song, okay. But if you have a ballad, okay, a romantic song, okay, something sappy and honey, okay, if you're writing something for your girlfriend, okay, you're serenading somebody of your preferred gender, okay, another problem, those chords, those chords would be good for that specific occasion, okay, make sense, take this as a joke please, okay, don't write me hate email about all this, okay, take this as a joke, but that would be the use for those chords, they're called honey chords for a reason, okay.
Again, you need to know, you need to know something about chord, how to build chord and oh wait, that's the wrong one, that's the right one, and so if you need to know something about the chord construction, I would recommend you guys, unless you already know all your triads everywhere on the fretboard, I recommend you guys take my course, Complete Chord Mastery, okay, it's a video course and it teaches you how to find all the triads all over the fretboard and then how to combine them to create new chords and then how to create chord progression within them and yes, we do talk also about the honey chord, even if I don't, I don't think I use that specific name in the course, okay, but we totally talk about the honey chords inside here, okay, so and way, way, way more kind of chords and kinds of chord progression and substitution you can apply, okay, so you want to see more about all that, get Complete Chord Mastery, go to the link down here, get it, okay, you are not going to regret that, okay, that is an offer you can't refuse, okay, and so, who's at the honey chord?
This is Tommaso Zillio for musictheoryforguitar.com and until next time, enjoy!