How To Use Augmented Chords Musically On Guitar

hey my friend in this lesson i'm going to show you six ways you can use augmented chords musically on guitar so if you don't know how to use augmented chords and how to create chord progressions with them this is going to be the perfect lesson for you so first of all what is an augmented chord it's when you take a regular triad of a root third and fifth and you raise the fifth to a sharp five so it does one three sharp five and it's a super tense chord that you can use to resolve in many different ways right and as far as the chord shapes you don't have a lot to learn you can use this one this three note shape if you want to make it a bigger chord you can add your ring finger on the fifth string or you could play a smaller shape on the top three strings so either this one this one or the bigger one because what's fascinating with augmented chords is that it's always going to make the same chord shape wherever you are on the fretboard so for example if i take c triads all over the fretboard and i want to create c augmented triads let's say i pick this one that comes from the c bar chord from the fifth string this one the fifth of the chord is the bottom note right here so if i want to raise it one fret higher it makes the same shape i showed you 30 seconds before if i take this c triad right here that comes from the c bar chord from the sixth string [Applause] this time the fifth of my chord is the top note so if i raise it i get the same shape again if i take for example the c open the fifth of my chord is the open open third so if i raise it one fret [Music] it's exactly the same shape again and if i leave the c it's like the bigger shape so either here or here or here it's exactly the same shape everywhere so that's why you always end up getting the same shape and as far as how to write the chord you're gonna see either a c sharp five or most of the times it's just gonna be a plus sign so if you see a c plus it means to play a c augmented chord so now let's go to my six tips to use it use it musically on guitar number one to use it as the third chord in harmonic minor so if you apply a harmonic minor scale it is made so if i play it in c minor for example is gonna be made of the one two minor three four five minor six natural seven one it's like an exotic feeling right so if we want to build triads off of the harmonic minor scale we get one minor three five or one flat 3 5 which makes a c minor chord if we keep going we get 2 4 flat 6 which create a d diminished and if we keep going we have flat three five seven natural seven so we get we get an augmented triad right in our case it's gonna be an e flat augmented so if i want to improvise with my c a harmonic minor scale i could create a chord progression like this like c minor [Music] and then e flat augmented [Music] c minor e flat augmented and then i can improvise with my c uh harmonic minor so if i try to do that with my little loop [Music] right so it's super cool if you want to create a totally different kind of mood using the harmonic minor scale it's just to use in my case i use the root chord c minor and then the three chord in harmonic minor which is uh exactly the e flat augmented on the flat three right so that's one way to do it the second way is just to substitute a dominant seven chord with an augmented chord so usually the dominant seven chord is going to be the five chord of your key that wants to resolve to the root chord so if i am in the key of g major for example then the five one two three four five is going to be on d and i'm gonna play a d dominant seven [Music] that's gonna want to resolve to g d [Music] but you can replace that dominant seven chord buy an augmented chord if you want [Music] so that's a d augmented that wants to resolve just as well to the g the g after it's just a different kind of tension that wants to resolve exactly to the same place in the case of our dominant 7 we have a contrary motion a resolution that we want one note wants to resolve upwards and one note wants to resolve downwards [Music] [Applause] but in the case of our augmented try it both notes wants to resolve upwards [Music] [Applause] so it's just a different flavor of resolution for your five chord whether it's or so it always works to substitute a dominant seven chord for a an augmented chord and you can play one after another if you want to add an extra spice here so you can play right it just makes you you you stay longer on the five chord [Music] which is super cool number three way is to have a chromatic descending cliche line right it's when you play a minor triad so for example if i am on b minor it's when you play the root note and you just descend chromatic like this so for example you've all heard that or or hear like [Music] so if we analyze the notes we got a b minor triad but when we bring the root note to the seventh [Applause] it actually creates our augmented shape right here so the notes right here are a sharp d and f sharp so what if i reconstruct the chord it makes an f sharp augmented and then it goes to a d and d try it and then to an e dominant nine super colorful so in fact that chord progression ends up being b minor then f sharp the augmented d and e dominant nine [Music] so it's cliche but it sounds so good to use chromaticism so you can use the augmented card in this way in that chord progression right here the number four way is actually kind of the opposite motion it's to use the augmented chord to link your relative major and minor chords so if you don't know what the relative major minor chords are for example if we stay in the key of g major that we used previously in the lesson in any major key the sixth chord of your harmonization is your relative minor chord so in my key right here i have the one chord two three four five six chord so e minor my six chord in my g major key is my relative minor chord it means that the key of g major and the key of e minor are like twin keys they share exactly the same notes exactly the same chords it's just a tonal center that's different right so you can use a an augmented chord in between your major chord and it's relative minor and that's gonna resolve super well so for example if i use my g [Music] and then i play i transform it into a g augmented and then i resolve on e minor which is my relative minor chord and it works well because you keep exactly the same thing at the bottom it's just a top note that moves right [Music] because that note right here wants to resolve upwards to that note and when we resolve here it creates an e minor triad right [Music] right so it's a great progression to use that so you could have a progression of like g g augmented after that and then e minor and then c for example so that would do [Music] [Applause] [Music] right i think it's something that beatles have done like it sounded a little bit like the beatles what i played so uh it's a really cool chord to use to link the relative major and minor chord the fifth way is just to use it as a vamp right because when you use the augmented chord it wants to resolve upwards but it can resolve downwards also to its previous chord i think it's because the sharp five can also be a flat six like it's a it's an enharmonic it means it could be a a sharp four a sharp five as much as it could be a flat six right so if it's a sharp five it wants to resolve upwards but if we consider that it's a flat six then it could resolve downwards right so you could use your root card and then play and augment it and then resolve to the same root card after and play it as a vamp maybe it's not the best example but the song uh baby hold on by eddie money so if you haven't lived through the the late 70s maybe you don't know this i'm too young for that but my parents know this very well so the the song baby hold on that goes like this [Music] like it's exactly this it's in the key like of d it's just a regular d open chord and then we play it as an augmented chord and we just resolve it to the root card and it works super well it's just a proof that you can resolve to the previous card as much as you can resolve to another card afterwards right and the number six way to use the augmented card musically is to take advantage of its symmetrical shape so like i said that shape right here is the same everywhere so you could use the same shape and just go four frets up and it's gonna create the same chord one two three four right so for example if i take uh i take it from the the second fret for example so what are the notes here we have f a and c sharp if i go four frets up one two three four we have the notes a c sharp and f exactly the same notes just in a different order it's an inversion one two three four what are the notes c sharp f and a so it's just always the same chord if you go four frets up or four frets down so you can use it to bridge the gap on the fretboard or like create more tension and momentum before you resolve your chord so if i do the same example where i go from g to g augmented and then i resolve to e minor and then to c i can take advantage of that so i could do like something like [Music] so g g augmented and i go four frets four frets four frets and i resolve to e minor [Music] [Applause] so that's another way to do it and it's actually something that you can also do with diminished chords to bridge the gap between frets on the fretboard so if you want to see my full lesson on diminished chord you can click on the upper card also so i hope it was helpful to you if you want to go further with me i have a completely free crash course on spread triads on my website if you don't know how to use spread triads they are the swiss knife of guitar cards i use them all the time and i have a totally free course you can check it out first link in the description box it's 45 of video lessons for free i'm giving you card charts and download downloadable exercises that you can practice to master all kinds of spread triad chords all over the fretboard it's my gift to you for watching my lesson until the end so you can check it out once again first link in the description box below to go further with me so i hope that you picked up a few things in this lesson and i'm gonna see you real soon until next time you

Channel: Antoine Michaud

Views: 25,328

Keywords: augmented chords, how to use augmented chords, augmented chords on guitar, augmented chord shapes, augmented chords guitar lesson, how to make music with augmented chords

Id: 9SI4lLVtz4M

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022