Chords for Metallic Shoegaze Techniques - Atmospheric Chords

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Hey everybody, Corey Gemini Guitar.
Today's lesson is focusing on a real melancholy style progression, A minor to F.
But I'm going to spice things up a bit with the voicings and you'll get to see that in a tick.
We're also going to use distortion which is going to thicken it up using our rhythm pickup.
So it's going to sound nice and fat and groovy.
So let's check it out and see how we go.
Ok, so first we'll get to grips with the chords.
Now there's only really going to be two of these and then you can experiment with your own ideas after that.
I'm going to show you a concept at work which will enable you to do that.
Ok, so the first shape involved is basically an A minor type chord.
I'm pretty sure it's an A minor add 9 but that's really not a big deal.
As long as we get the shape right it's going to sound cool anyway.
So we've got 13th fret on 2nd string and we've got the 16th on the 3rd string.
And we've got the 14th on the 4th string.
With that we're going to play the open 5th and the open 1st string.
You want to switch to your rhythm pickup here and use a reasonable amount of distortion.
I'm not overdriving it to the max but you want a pretty fat sort of driven sound.
And this is what this [F#m] one's going to sound like. _
As _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ [F#] _ _ [C#m] you can hear there it's a nice blend.
It's got a metallic, melancholic sort of feel to it which is really cool.
_ Now the other chord or the basic chord shape we're going to use is pretty much an F power chord with the addition of the E note.
As far as I know this makes it Fmaj7 but again let's not worry about the names.
Let's just focus on the sound and getting the shape into place.
We've got the root note F.
That's fret 13 on string 6.
We've got the C note on the 5th string.
That's fret 15.
And then we've got the E note which is at fret 14 on string 4.
Now with this one you probably don't want to play the high E string.
But if you do it's not going to sound that bad.
So I'm just going to demonstrate this one [A] now. _ _
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Now if that sounds a bit too noisy what you can do is just restrict yourself to the 6th, 5th, 4th strings and maybe the 3rd as an open string.
It sounds a bit like this. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [G#m] And that's [A] opposed to the previous sound. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [E]
But I like the sound of the other one.
It's nice and noisy and stuff.
So a nice textural sort of sound which is cool.
So the first one what I'd suggest doing is changing the fingering somewhat.
So you might say take the 4th finger off, replace that with your 3rd finger on the same note.
Then put your 1st at fret 14 on string 4 fret 14.
Now what this does is this opens you up a bit so you can use some notes, colour notes I like to call these, on the 2nd and the 1st string.
So for example we could use the D note on string 2 at fret 15.
_ [G#] _
And now it sounds like this.
[A] If we [G#] play from the 5th string.
[D#] But we could also introduce the [G#] octave, the A note at [B] fret 17 on string minus.
_ _ _ [F#] [E] So what I'm going to do here [A] is just play the first shape.
_ _ _ And [E] I'm going to transform that into the [C#] next shape.
_ _ [G#m] _ Next one.
_ _ _ And what you're going to find here is it's got a melodic characteristic.
And this is a really important part of being a good rhythm guitarist.
You don't want to be stuck in bar chord and power chord land because quite frankly they get boring after a while.
So these are going to basically help you to look at the guitar more as a series of shapes and experimental shapes at that.
There's really no need to know the names of the chords.
I [Em] think it's more [C#] important just to put your fingers down, have a bit of a go, check it out.
If it sounds good, it is good.
[G#m] That's the best way to look at it.
So don't worry too much about the theoretical side of things and free yourself up a bit.
[F#m] So we'll listen to that. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ [F#m] _ _ _ _ [C#m] _ _
_ [G#] _ _ _ _ _ [F#m] _ _
_ _ _ _ Okay, so back to the second shape we looked at which was the F major 7 shape we'll call that.
Now with this one you could also use some higher notes but this time probably not up to string 1, maybe on the 2nd and the 3rd string.
So for example if we [D] take the basic shape.
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Now we could stick a B note in there.
So the B note's at the 16th fret on string 3.
This has got a really nice tension about it.
[D] _ _ _
_ _ _ [E] Not only that, we can bend that B note up.
That's a nice little trick I like to use.
So you just get your pinky there and you just give it a little bit of a curl.
They call curls in blues music because you just bend them up slightly or you can bend it up a half step.
And this sounds nice.
So if we can bend up to the C note, [A] _ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _
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that's got a really, what would you say, dramatic sort of sound about it which is really nice.
But not only that, if you're struggling with that, you could just basically put your pinky across onto the C note.
So you just move across a fret.
So you'd end up at 17th on the 3rd string. _ _
[A] And you could switch between those two if you wanted to.
[D] _ _ _ _
_ _ Go back to the original shape. _ _
_ _ _ _ [A#] [C] Introduce it [D] again. _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [A#] _ [N] And so on.
So that's pretty much the way I'd look at these two chords up in this area of the neck.
Now don't forget that once you get a shape you like, look for the other scale tones around it.
That's the important thing.
So this is where knowing your scales comes in handy I guess, but we can't do that today.
It's beyond the scope of the lesson.
But that's just a couple of notes there that we could use with each of those chords.
And you can just have a fiddle around then and see how you go.
And like I said before, remember that in music whatever sounds good normally is good.
So you have to use your ears.
And not everybody is always going to like the same things as you do, but that's what makes music cool.
That's what makes it interesting and powerful is the fact that there's so much variety and creativity in it.
So it's not necessary for everyone to like it.
If you like it and it sounds good, that's what matters.
So keep that in mind as you [A] experiment with these ideas and have fun with them.
So until the next lesson, bye for now. _ _ _ _ _