[cymbaline]

The other day at church, one of the guys in the band played "I Could Sing of Your Love Forever" with harmonic chords, and it sounded so pretty... I had an idea of what he was doing, but wasn't sure of the chord formation he was using as he went up the neck. So I went up to him after service, and asked him to show me those chords, he said they're harmonic chords...

you start out w/ E 022100
the move up to the 4th fret, 7th fret and so on, forming these chords:

044200
077600
099800

can anyone tell me the names of these chords? I'm writing a song using them... and so far I'm just labeling the chords as E, E(4)
E(7) and E(9).

Also, can anyone tell me of any other chords like that? I've done it w/ C

032010 going up to
054030

And I've done it w/ Fmaj7 (003210 at another fret (can't remember which frets unless i pick up my guitar.)

thanks

-kelly

[nate95366]

Kelly,

Those are regular chords!!! There's no special name like "harmonic" chords for them or anything. Actually, harmonics are a whole other issues. You've just discovered something really cool about the guitar, though - call it your own personal breakthrough or whatever......but now it will make sense to you when I say:

Chords are not named after what your hand is doing, they're named after the notes you're playing!!!

Follow me here: You're just playing an "E" and sliding it all over, so you're wanting to call the chords "E something...." Really, the similarity between all of those chords is not their "E-ness," but their "MAJOR-ness." The hand position that you call "E" is really just 1 way to play a whole bunch of related MAJOR chords. Same for what you call the "F major seventh chords." The reason you call those major sevenths is because the first one, XX3210, is a major seventh because you leave the first string open. Mute the first string and you get XX321X, or "F Major." Shift that position all over the place and you've got another way to play "Major" chords.

You're innocently learning the theory behind all barre chords and that's so cool!!!

So, let's set about naming the chords you've stumbled upon. We'll name them by the notes in them, not by what your hand is doing:

044300 is really "F#add4/E"
the open B string is the "add 4" because it adds the 4th note of the F# scale to the chord
If you just wanted to play "F#," you'd just barre across at the second fret and play an "E" form with your other fingers

077600 is really "Aadd2/E"
the open B string is the "add 2" because it adds the 2nd note of the A major scale to the chord
If you just wanted to play plain old "A" in a new way, you'd just barre at the 5th fret and play an "E" form...

099800 is really "Badd4/E"
the open E strings are the "add 4" because E is the 4th note in the B major scale
If you just wanted to play a plain "B" you'd barre at the 7th fret and play an "E" form


Are you catching this!!!??? You can apply it to lots and lots of different hand formations that you know......and it's exciting!!!

Nate