Infinite Fretboard

You might've read my previous article on common tone diminished chords (a secret technique to spice up your chord progressions) .  If not, click here to check it out!  The following is a continuation of that article. The year is 2018 and everyone is talking about the B-flat Major7 chord with a C in the bass. Is it a 9th chord in 1st inversion or a sus 13th chord? It's the 2k18 sound . Who cares! I'm more concerned about CESH. CESH is just a fancy acronym for Chromatic Embellishment of Static Harmony . You every read through a boring chart that is something like G7 for 4 bars, followed by C7 for 4 bars? CESH is a way of embellishing such a progression so that one doesn't fall asleep on the gig. While working on common tone diminished chords for my previous article, I realized that chords like these were an effective tool for incorporating CESH. Let's start with a G7 chord: Ex 1: G7 Boring, huh? There's a few different ways of making it more interes...

I was sightreading Giulio Regondi's 4th etude recently when this little chromatic passage caught my attention: In the dominant key (B-major), this excerpt showcases a very interesting romantic-style turnaround. In essence, it's just an embellishment of the dominant chord (F#7) as it resolves in the following measure. But Regondi's means of getting there are very hip. Observe how on the third beat, a fully-diminished chord resolves up to an F#7 in 2nd-inversion. That is a prime example of a common-tone diminished chord. This sound is achieved by lowering the 3rd, 5th, and 7th of a dominant chord by one semitone, while maintaining the root (hence the term "common-tone"). Regondi takes it a step further and proceeds to a B-diminished 7th chord before resolving to B-major. Notice how every note of the B-major chord in the 2nd measure is approached from a semitone below? (except for b which is the common tone) After analyzing this fragment of music, I wondere...

Most guitarists practice plenty of scales and exercises, maybe even some arpeggios, on a daily basis. One of the often overlooked aspects of guitar study is the acquaintance with the triads across the fingerboard. Soon after I initiated my quest to discover the secrets hidden within the fretboard, I realized the importance of triads, the building block of common practice harmony. My first instinct was to practice triads in conjunction with scales in every key (even the flat keys!). This quickly became an arduous process as each key has 7 triads, 3 inversions of each; there are 24 keys, and on top of that, 4 string sets (adjacent groupings of strings)! That's over 2,000 individual chords to play and doesn't even touch on the split voicings, in which strings are skipped. To practice this everyday is way too ambitious and leaves no time to play MUSIC! My light-bulb moment was when one of my guitar professors at school handed out a glorious sheet on triads to the students. It...

If you’re like me, you can play tremolo quickly and smoothly on the 1st string but get sloppy on the 2nd and 3rd strings. I realized my problem is that my 1st finger goes out too far; often hitting the adjacent string. I have found that one way of combatting this is by practicing quintuplet tremolo. The pattern for this is similar to the typical tremolo fingering (pami), but with an extra i finger added, making it piami. It’s a true  quintuplet, meaning that there are 5 notes to the beat and every note has equal value. This is a pattern common to flamenco guitar and useful for classical guitarists as well. Requiring you to plant i before the other fingers, piami will train you to position the entire hand in the proper position so that you're not swinging too wide and hitting the wrong string. Try it out and tell me what you think! (Recuerdos de la Alhambra is the perfect piece to practice tremolo on the 2nd string) A post shared by Chris Delisa (@infinite_fretboard)...