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Enhancing The Supertonic ChordSlowly but surely, we're laying the foundations that will allow us to write songs on guitar with ease. Hopefully, if you've followed this course from part 1 (full contents here), you'll be getting familiar with the lesson structure, so the theory we're about to look at will be based on similar concepts from previous lessons. Remember: it's important you have a basic understanding of chords on guitar. The chords section on the main site has everything you need to learn chords! So, where are we now? Let's spend a little more time looking at the supertonic which we were introduced to in part 4. There are ways to modify that ii chord to give it more variation. Using a major supertonic chordAs we learned in the last part, the supertonic is, in its natural form, a minor chord. However, you'll hear many songs that use a major ii chord (in which case, we'll use the upper case II).For example, in the key of E major (E major being our tonic, I chord)... II IV I - click to hear > I IV II V IV - click to hear > So it's simply a case of experimenting with changing that ii minor chord to a II major chord to see how it interacts with the other chords in the scale we've been building over the past lessons. In later lessons, you'll also hear how it interacts with chords outside this foundation scale. Spicing up the supertonicJust as we had lessons on how to enhance the role of the IV and V chords, the same applies to the ii or II chord.Before, we learned that the dominant chord (V) can be enhanced using a dominant 7th chord. We also learned that the sub-dominant chord (IV) can be enhanced using either a major 7th, dominant 7th or minor chord. Firstly, you can use minor 7th chords to add depth to the ii chord. If you've been through the chord section on the site, you'll know how to use both open and barre chord shapes for a minor 7th chord. Here are a couple of examples... ii V I - click to hear >
IV ii I - click to hear >
And when we turn the ii chord into a major II chord, we can use the dominant 7th to enhance that position... I II IV V - click to hear >
These chord relationships are all drawing from the positions we learned in the last part. You should learn to play them in any key by learning those positions. Suspended ii chords If you've been through the chord section on the site, you should be familiar with suspended chords. These are neither major nor minor because the tone responsible for making the chords major/minor (the 3rd) is replaced by another tone (the 2nd or 4th). One effective way to use a suspended ii chord is to resolve it to a major II chord. Let's just use the last example from above... I II IV V - click to hear >
So there's a mini-resolution within the progression that adds a bit of variation to our journey away from that home/tonic chord. And you could take it a step further, by following this sequence on the ii/II chord - suspended, major, minor - then move on with the progression. So you can include all the flavours of that ii/II chord in a sequence if you want. Experiment! A recap...We've actually come a long way since the first part, even though we only have 4 chords to play around with at the moment. We've learned how to enhance and modify the ii, IV and V chords, which means you technically have more to experiment with than just 4 chords.Try different combinations of these chord positions (I, ii, IV, V) and don't be afraid to add in some improvised chord positions (hey, you never know, you might end up picking up the rest of the chord scale by ear!). We'll keep building this foundation scale over the next few lessons - not long to go now - then things will get a lot less constrained. You will realise, however, that me taking you through these foundation steps was absolutely necessary to enable you to fully explore your creative potential. See you soon...  < Guitar Songwriting Contents
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