On the other hand, some thought processes seem to be faster than others. But I don't think you can make up a set of rules, because which minor chord position is best will depend on the music. Much like finding major chords, I think it's a matter of playing until you get familiar enough with the tuning that you don't have to think about it anymore.

Anyways, a couple more options would be:

There's a minor chord one fret up from the A+B position with the E's lowered. The first fret has an A minor chord, for example.

There's a minor chord two frets back from the no pedals position, by rooting on the seventh string and hitting your A and B pedals. The tenth fret has an E minor chord.

Another way of thinking about your A pedal minor chord is to think of it as the A+F position without the F lever. This way you can base your thinking off the no pedals position and just add three frets for a minor chord.

Another way to think of your E>D# minor chord is that it is always four frets back from the no pedals position. This is, of course, the same as the one above, one fret up from the A+B position, but if you're not in the A+B position it might be easier to think of it this way.

I'm sure there are lots more ways to find minor chords that aren't really based on obvious "positions." Going up four frets and playing ten, nine and seven is sort of an example of that. The only reason the "position" tricks work is that we're used to thinking of the neck from the open, no pedals position, so we don't really need to think about where things are. I'm sure that if everybody started learning the neck from the E>D# position, we'd relate everything to that. The point being, the straight no pedals position probably isn't intrinsically faster (although you could argue that, since it's the position the guitar defaults to when nothing is pressed), it's just that we're used to it. So, the more we learn about the other positions, the faster they'll get, and we won't have to pause to relate everything back to the key of E.

At least that's my theory. My thought process for minor chords is so far pretty baroque.

Since the Minor Chord I need is usually the 6m or 2m, of the key I'm playing in, this thought process works well for me. If I'm in an odd key, it is still just a simple as if I was playing in C major.

Example:
C Maj, no pedals, 8th fret -
press the A pedal and get the 6m (Am)
Press BC and get the 2m (Dm)

C Maj, AB pedals, 3rd fret -
press pedal A only and get 3m (Em)
press BC and have the 6m (Am)

Transpose these ideas into other keys.

Example: Play the 6m in the key of D#

Of course you can easily find a 2m if you have a 3m, by moving down two frets, and vice versa.

Excellent topic!
I like these "thought process" discussions.

The statement "Say you want to play a Bb minor chord" is not completely true. Becuse you want to play a Chord followed by a Bb minor, followed by another chord and that will dictate more or less where to play the Bb minor chord.
It maight take some time to see the relation within the chords but in the end it will be an advantage.

[This message was edited by Bengt Erlandsen on 10 November 2004 at 08:51 AM.]

Ughh, it sounds harder than it is.

When the bass is playing a D minor 7 (D, F, A, C), I might pay a F major (F, A, C.) The bassman has the root note (D) & I'm outlining the minor 3rd, 5th & 7th tones of the chord.

But finding all the minor chords once you are in a give key is different. How you find the minors depends on whether you are playing in a major or minor key. If I am in a major key, then I think like Joey. The minor chord you want is usually the relative minor (VIm), less often the IIm, and occassionally the IIIm.

In the open pedal I chord position, you get the rel. minor by just pressing the A pedal. In the AB pedal I chord position, you get the relative minor by pressing the BC pedals. You can also get the rel. minor at the open IV chord position by using the E lower lever. So you can get the rel. minor from the I, IV, or V chord position by using either the A pedal, E lever, or BC pedals, respectively.

You get the IIm by pressing the BC pedals at the open pedal I chord position, or by droppin down a whole step and using the E lever. You can also get the IIm by pressing the A pedal at the open IV chord position.

You get the IIIm at the open I position with the E lever. At the open V fret, you get IIIm with the A pedal.

So you get all of the above with no fret counting, and just matching the number system with your basic pedals and levers - so it works in any key, without even knowing the letter names of these minor chords.

But if you are playing in a minor key, things are a little different, but related. The main chords will be Im, IVm, and V7. I consider the A pedal Im position as analagous to the open pedal I position of a major key. I find these by knowing the relative minor (VIm, or one and one-half step down from the major I) for the common major keys. So A pedal Am is at the open C fret, Em at the open G fret, Dm at the F fret, etc.

At the A pedal Im postion you get the IVm with the BC pedals. The Im to IVm change in a minor key is the same as the rel. minor to IIm change in the rel. major key - so you already know this from above.

There is a lot of going back and forth between Im and V. At the A pedal Im position, you get V by dropping back one fret and pressing the AB pedals - easy as pie.

There is also a pocket at the fret where the BC pedals give you the Im, and another one where the E lever gives you the Im. This is getting too long, so I'll leave that for you to work out on your own (okay, I don't really know these off the top of my head like I should). The trick is to think in terms of the number system and pockets, rather than to try to memorize all the different places to get the letter names of the minor chords. This puts you in a good position to follow the chords by ear in any key. Knowing all the letter names is much more difficult, but is helpful for reading music, or when someone shouts out Bb minor.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 16 September 2004 at 10:18 AM.]

quote:

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"what's the first thing you think to locate yourself when the first chord of a tune is Bb minor (suppose that the tune is IN Bb minor)? Joey, would you still relate it to it's relative major?"

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Yes I would. I am mainly a commercial country and rock player so that situation does not occur too often. On the minor key songs I can think of, I don't even chord, just play sustained single note fills.

I would probably go to fret 4, (the G# Major) , and press BC to give the 2m (Bbm).

Or I might play the Bb chord at fret 1, AB pedals, and half pedal the A pedal, to flat the third scale tone, producing a Bbm. That's another minor I forgot to mention.

[This message was edited by Joey Ace on 16 September 2004 at 12:24 PM.]

Maybe what you're saying is, "I find it simple enough to locate major chords by thinking of the fretboard as being in either the key of E or A. Finding minor chords by thinking in the key of E or A and then going up or down a certain number of frets seems slow to me. But I'm not enjoying finding minor chords by thinking of the fretboard as being based on C#m or G#m. Is there a better way?" Is it something like that? Because unless I'm missing something, those pretty much ARE the two ways of finding minor chords, except perhaps for memorizing where every note is with every pedal combination--useful if you could do it!

I think a good exercise would be to go through all the minor chord inversions on strings four, five and six (don't forget slants!). Just like when you were first learning the major chord positions. While doing this, you can either relate the minor chord positions you find back to some "easy to locate" major chord position, or you can use the practice to solidify the way you say you're already doing it, i.e. twelfth fret A pedal is C#(Db)m, so ninth fret must be A#(Bb)m, etc.

------------------
Tim Harr
Carter D-10 8p & 9k w/ BL-705s; Hilton pedal; Webb 6-14E Amplifier

http://groups.msn.com/TimHarrWebPage/yourwebpage.msnw

One thing to maybe try out is to really learn the neck with your major keys and chords. Make sure you know what every chord tone is you are playing.( You know.. 3rd, root, 7th or whatever). If you know that stuff on the majors the minors will become obvious after a little bit.

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Bob
intonation help

I see that if I'm in the key if F it would be a 4 minor which I know is always at the #5 fret. To I'd play it at the 9th fret with the A pedal, the 2nd fret with the E lever or the 4th fret with B+C pedals. This is all based on where I would find the 5 chord in F, and going up one fret.

But what other keys would I use the Bbm in? It's the 6 minor in Db, but nobody plays in Db.

Okay, it's the 2 minor in Ab. That's easier. 2 minor is like a 4 chord. The 4 chord is at the 2nd fret E lever, 4th fret A+B and 9th fret. The 2 minor is at the same places.

After a while, the relationships between the 3 positions for a minor chord become second nature. Thos relationships never change - the whole mental figure of the 3 position moves up and down the fretboard as a single unit.

More than likely, I'd be using it mostly in the key of Bb minor.

BTW...I love the G# to G change alot. It really does some great stuff on my Ext.E9!!!

Thanks

quote:

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More than likely, I'd be using it mostly in the key of Bb minor.

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We had 15 minutes to come up with something out in the lobby of the studio. The harp player decided using the chromatic harp would be different, and the dark night had us thinking minor, and that was easier for him to play holding the slide in. But he didn't know what chord that was. I just held down the A pedal and slid up the neck til I found the chord at the ninth fret. Since I recognized that was a half step above the familiar Am chord at the C fret, I told him the key was A# minor. Then after a split second I said, "Hold it, make that Bb minor" (duh). Byard wanted to lay down a sax track later. I asked him if Bb minor was okay for him, and it was, since that is C minor for tenor sax.

I played it like it was the Am pocket at the 8th fret, but one fret up. I have no idea what the chords are for the key of Bb minor. All I know is I got the Im with the A pedal, the IVm at the same fret with the BC pedals, and the V by dropping back one fret and hitting the AB pedals. That's the value of knowing the number system for a common pocket. I cannot imagine learning the chords for all 24 major and minor keys. Nor can I imagine learning the name of every chord at every fret for every pedal/knee combination for every possible root string. Even if I could manage to memorize all that, down the road I wouldn't remember it for keys and chords I rarely play, like Bb minor.

As far as our improv blues, Byard only let us do one take. It would have been pretty good, except one of the legs on my Zum was loose, and when I hit the BC pedals for the IVm, my guitar skidded across the hardwood floor and the pedals didn't go all the way down. And once when I looked up at the control room, I came back in one fret sharp. Oh yeah, and the engineer wanted me to play direct into the board and let him use an amp model. I said I'd rather play through a real amp, but did he have a model for a Fender tube amp. He said, well we have a real Twin if you want it. So I decided not to go back out to the lobby for my own amp. But he rolled in a snakeskin covered The Twin. I never got it dialed in good (I don't think I ever could). Also, I tried to use just a touch of fuzz, but didn't get it dialed down low enough. I thought I would be able to adjust it before the second take. But there wasn't one. Once we started in on the dark night theme, we sort of forgot about the train and the marching band. After the one take, Byard said that's enough. He can be a little cryptic, so I don't know if he meant "that's good enough," or "forget it, I'm not using that crap." Don't you just love studio work

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 03 March 2005 at 10:08 AM.]

For me, typically as the relative minor (VIm) of Db major, the IIm of Ab major, the IIIm of F# major, or the IVm of F major, and obviously I of Bb minor. But this is not complete, those are just the more common ones for me. BTW, Emmylou sings a lot in Db, so I've had to play in Db covering her tunes in bands. Some female singers I've played with also seem to like Db.

There are some mathematical interval relationships between chord types that help me sometimes. For example: 3, 5, 7 in any major 7th chord is a minor with root two whole steps up from the root of the major 7th. For example, Cmaj7 is C(1), E(3), G(5), B(7). So, E minor is just E(1), G(b3), B(5). This can be applied directly on the steel - the easiest major 7th chord I know is to play the usual open E first inversion (e.g., strings 6, 5, 4), and lower the 1 (E, string 4) using the E->Eb lever, which also can be interpreted as Ab minor (IIIm), as David D. explained above. What I'm adding here is the interpretation as a major 7th chord. Anymore, this is not just theoretical, but practical, because I can now hear and use the III minor triad in a I major 7th chord and vice-versa. For me, this I -> IIIm change is easier and usually sounds smoother/better than going up to the 7th fret to use the A-pedal version, or even grabbing the BC-pedal IIIm at the 2nd fret. On the other hand, if you're doing the AB-pedal version of E major at the 7th fret, it's obviously a lot easier to just hit the A-pedal to get IIIm. For me, the melody, song context, and ease of playing decide which specific chord version/voicing to use.

There are tons of these chord equivalences. For example, a 9th chord is 1, 3, 5, b7, 9(2 one octave up). But now consider the partial 2nd inversion - 5, b7, 9. This is just a minor chord with root a fifth interval up from the root of the 9th. So if you can play a minor, you can also play a reasonable-sounding partial ninth chord for many applications. These are only two different ways to look at just the minor triad. Further, one can equally well do the same with major triads, diminished triads, not to mention more complex chords. I found this approach useful on guitar, but owing to the relative difficulty in moving that heavy bar around a lot, I find it even more useful on pedal steel.

A lot of these chord substitutions are well known in music theory, but I seem to need to re-invent the wheel my own way. Several years back, I wrote a C program to re-interpret a chord (input as a sequence of notes represented as one of 24 numbers in the 2-octave, 12-tone scale) in all other 11 possible keys. Most of what came out was not interesting, but occasionally something cool popped out. Unfortunately, drat, I can't find that program, probably have to start over again.

I realize we all think differently. Some people prefer to memorize every single note/chord on the neck, but that's a lotta notes/chords! I'm lazy, I prefer to think strictly about the mathematical relationships between notes & chords. I don't think there's any 'correct' answer. Do you like symphony-style scores or Nashville number charts? I'm with the numbers guys, but YMMV.

David, that doesn't sound like a fun studio date. I think it's important to be relaxed in the studio, why do people work on thinking up ways to stress players out? I think it's way too common, and doesn't generally lead to very good results. IMO.