Bob Brozman gave us the
gateway drug into open-G playing in the May
issue with a swampolicious one-chord blues.
But what if we want to play more than one
chord?
“If you want to suggest every major and
minor chord on the top two strings,” he
explains, “there are only two shapes you need
to know: both strings at the same fret for a
major chord, and your first finger one fret
behind your second for a minor chord.” He
plays Ex. 1, a harmonized G major scale made
even easier with our tuning—B and D on the
two highest strings. Because these are two-note chords, their naming them is somewhat
ambiguous, but we’ll go with a G-centric
nomenclature, calling them G, Am, Bm, and
so on Ex. 2 is a mirror image of those moves
because we’re using the middle D string
instead of the high D. Pretty slick.
“For blues,” continues Brozman, “we just
alter this scale slightly.” We substitute F for
F# and we get the chord scale in Ex. 3. We
then do our mirror-image revoicing trip in
Ex. 4. We can view the first three chords as
G, Am, and Bm7b5, but it’s bluesier to see
them as G, C, and G7. Play this entire scale
backwards, forwards, and skipping around
in order to get really comfortable with them,
but play them with no fear. “People learned
how to do all of this without teachers. Your
ears will burn if you hit a note that’s out of
key.” Feel free to hit the open strings to fill
the sound out—all of these two-note chords
will sound good against all the open strings,
especially the fifth-string G.
Now that we have a handle on the shapes,
let’s put them in a song. Ex. 5 is an infectious
progression that is made up of a simple line
on the top strings and a simple bass line. Playing
the two at once with a Brozman-approved
swing is not so simple, however. Play them
slowly, tap your foot, and don’t cheat the bass
notes because they’re just as important as the
melody. As he finishes Ex. 5, Brozman offers
this advice: “Once you get these grips under
your fingers, you can use them in so many
different styles of music.” Next month, we
do it island style by showing how these lines
work in Hawaiian music.