Lesson 1: Increasing your Chord Vocabulary through Diatonic Transposition One way to increase your vocabulary of chord voicings is to take a particular chord form and move it diatonically through a given scale. In example one we'll start with a common voicing for a CMaj7 chord before heading into some relatively uncharted territory: Ex. 1 now move each note in the chord up step-wise through the C Major scale: Ex. 2 Tthis can be done with any chord voicing you can think of, and through various scales. For instance, you could take the CMaj7 voicing above and move it through the G Major scale (in this case the C chord would be functioning as the IV in the key of G Major). Let's try this process with a voicing that's built out of stacked 6th intervals. Begin by taking the interval of a 6th in any scale (in this example C Major), then find the next diatonic 6th interval: Ex. 3 Putting the 2 together yields this voicing (the optional bass note is shown for clarity): Ex. 4 Move this voicing up diatonically through the C Major scale. Pay careful attention to the suggested fingerings. Some are a stretch: Ex. 5 <<Back to Lesson Index

Scott Sorkin plays Ribbecke and Chapin guitars, and Breedlove mandolins. © 2005, Scott Sorkin. All rights reserved. email: scott@scottsorkin.com