Guitar George
BY ANDY ELLIS
CHOPS: Intermediate
THEORY: Advanced
LESSON OVERVIEW:
• Learn how to voice chords
around a common tone
• Expand your harmonic
vocabulary
• Play mind games with your
guitar buddies
To hear sound clips of
these examples, head to
premierguitar.com/aug2011
When “Sultans of Swing” first hit the airwaves in 1978, I remember going
ape over Mark Knopfler’s supple lines and
bell-like Strat tone. But something else struck
me as well, and that was the line “You check
out Guitar George, he knows all the chords.”
I thought, “Wow, I wonder what it’s like to
know all the chords. I want to be that guy!”
So I set out to learn as many chords as
I could. Along the way, I developed a little
game to help me expand my harmonic
vocabulary. Of course, since then I’ve
discovered that no one really knows all
the chords—although the late Ted Greene
could be the exception—but I still play
the game.
The rules are simple:
Choose a note and then
play as many chords
as possible that each
include this particular
tone in the identical
fretboard location.
fooled by the F% in measure 2’s B%dim7.
Enharmonically, that’s E, but the 5 of a
B% chord is F, so when you lower it to a
5
to create a diminished voicing, it becomes
F%—which is an odd duck, I must say.
Because F% is also E by another name, I
haven’t broken the rules in this round of
Guitar George.
First published in 1971, Chord Chemistry established the late Ted Greene as
one of the great guitar gurus of modern
times. The pithy book offers years of
study to any guitarist looking for harmonic inspiration, and it’s still in print.
Greene’s
fingerstyle
magic is documented on
You Tube, so
if you haven’t
yet explored
it, jump online
pronto.
Fig. 1
44 &
Freely Fmaj7
oeoeoeoe
Dm9
oeoeoeoe
C#m7 B11
oeoeoeoe oeoeoeoe
Bm11
oe
oe oeoe
E7b5 Bbdim7
oeoeoeoe b oeoeoeoe bn b
Am7
oe
oeoeoe
Ab7#5 G13
oe
oeoeoe b
b oeoeoeoe
F#m7
oeoeoeoe
Fmaj7
oeoeoeoe nn
Emaj7
˙
˙ ˙˙
™
™™™
OE
˙
8
7
5
5
5
3
5
5
4
6
4
5
2
4
2
5
7
7
7
5
6
6
7
5
6
5
6
5
5
5
5
5
4
4
5
5
3
3
4
5
2
4
2
5
1
3
2
5
0
6
8
