RHyTHm & GROOVES
ANDY ELLIS
The Bead Game
Fig. 1
It’s tempting to view a chord progression
as a sequence of fixed note formations that
we grip and release, one after the other.
This makes sense on a tactile level because,
after all, it‘s what our fingers are doing. But
if we only think of chords as discrete grips,
we may overlook how each one is connecting to its neighbor. And when we don’t pay
attention to these harmonic transitions, we
can wind up lurching around the fretboard,
playing voicings that don’t dovetail musically. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact,
some styles demand sliding up and down
the neck with barre or power chords to create a jagged effect. But, as we’ll discover in
this lesson, there are other ways to navigate
a progression.
Fig. 1
8fr
8fr
6fr
5fr
5fr
8fr
213
321
132
241
131
131
A7(no3rd)
10fr
10fr
10fr
7fr
7fr
314
213
111
113
111
motion, which serves to draw listeners into
this chord change.
One approach involves making the smallest
possible shifts between the notes in one chord
and the next. This technique yields a flowing,
molten sound, and it’s well worth exploring.
in this lesson contain four or more notes in
their full form, but we’re going to cherry-pick three that allow us to follow our bead
game rules.
Rules of Engagement
The concept—which, incidentally, we’re
borrowing from horn and string arranging—
is to have the notes in one chord move by
either a half-step or whole-step to the notes
in the subsequent chord. Occasionally, we
interrupt this stepwise motion with a leap
of a minor third (three half-steps), but that’s
the largest move we make. Sometimes, one
of the notes remains the same as we switch
chords. This common tone acts as sonic
glue, binding adjacent voicings, even as
they change.
For starters, play through the voicings in
Fig. 1 to loosen up your hands and get
familiar with the fingerings we’ll soon stitch
into a progression. Many of these will be
old friends, but some—D7 and A9, for
example, in grids 2 and 3—might be new.
If you peer closely at the A7–A9–A7 changes in bars 3 and 4, you’ll see common tones
(for instance, the 2nd-string G occurs in all
three voicings), two whole-step moves, and
a minor-third leap. Nice and tight—so far,
so good.
The A7–D7 shift (bars 4 and 5) is very
economical, consisting of a common tone
and two half-step drops. Conversely, the
D7–E%° 7 change incorporates three upward,
minor-third leaps. This parallel movement
is immediately balanced by the contrary
motion in the E%° 7–A7 change across bars
6 and 7.
It’s fun to visualize this process as moving
beads on wires. In other words, imagine
each chord tone is a bead that either stays
put or shifts up or down on its string by
one, two, or three frets (a half-step, whole-step, and minor third, respectively) to
morph into the next voicing. It’s a game:
Can you play a progression without breaking these strict rules?
As you fret each of these chords, notice
how three do double duty, depending on
where they’re positioned: A7 and E%° (grids
1 and 8), D7 and E%° 7 (grids 5 and 6), and
Dm and D6 (grids 9 and 11). This “shared
shape” phenomenon happens because
we’re selecting a subset of a chord’s available tones. (If we were to fret the chords in
their entirety, we’d spot their physical differences.) Expert rhythm guitarists routinely
use multi-purpose fingerings to craft their
parts. It takes time to master such musical
sleight of hand, but the payoff is huge.
So we can clearly picture the note-to-note
movement, let’s keep things simple and
stick with three-note voicings on the top
three strings. Most of the chords we’ll play
Let the Games Begin
Now it’s time to put our rules into action by
playing Fig. 2, a 12-bar blues progression
in the key of A. As you change the first two
chords, watch those beads shift when you
move from A7 to D7. Check it out: On the
1st string, the top note, C#, drops a fret to
C. On the 2nd and 3rd strings, each note
moves up two frets, (G–A and E–F#, respectively). Excellent! We’ve created contrary
At this point, you’ve seen enough to know
how the bead game works. As you complete the progression, take a moment to
evaluate each chord change and track its
note-to-note movement. You’ll find that
right through the end of bar 12, every
change consists of common tones and half-step, whole-step, or minor-third moves. The
only exception is when we reach the end of
bar 12 and jump back to the top to repeat
the progression. Because bar 12’s E7 and
bar 1’s A7 share the same fingering, try sliding from E7 to A7 for a dramatic break from
our otherwise frugal motion.
By the way, the A7–E%°–Dm–A7 move in bar
8 makes a dandy turnaround or intro. With
