KEYS
A WORLD WITHOUT COLOR , PART 2 | Ed Kerr
In my last article I dove pretty deep into some of the possibilities you and I have as keyboard players for adding color to our pad parts . In that article I explored options for the 1 chord and 4 chord , half of the 1,4,5,6 family of chords used so often in modern worship songs . In this article I ’ ll explore possibilities for the 5 chord and the 6 chord . Let ’ s go .
THE 5 CHORD I ’ m sure that songs written by Paul Baloche have been part of your worship team ’ s repertoire for years . Songs like “ Open the Eyes of My Heart ”, “ Above All ”, “ Behold Him ” and many others . Besides being a great songwriter and worship leader , Paul is a great guitarist , and many of his chord voicings have color tones in them . When Paul plays “ Open the Eyes of My Heart ” in the key of E , the second chord is a Badd4 . It ’ s a great example of color chords . It features a dissonance between the D # that ’ s part of the
B chord and the added 4 , which is the note E . Besides sounding great on acoustic guitar , the add4 chord is a great option for us as pad players .
Let ’ s say you ’ re playng in the key of E and , as suggested in my earlier articles , you ’ re holding down the 1 and 5 in the scale . That ’ s an E and a B . Remember that you always have a choice of which of these two notes to put on top of your right hand voicing . For this first example , play the B on top .
RIGHT HAND VOICING OF 5 CHORD VOICING WITH ADD4 Top note : Root of chord B 5 th note in scale Middle note : Add 4 of chord E 1 st note in scale Bottom note : Third of chord D # 7 th note in scale
As you get used to using these colorful voicings for your chords , it can sometimes be confusing as we talk about notes in the scale and notes in a chord . For example , the 5 chord voicing I ’ m suggesting above contains the 5 th note of the E scale , B , and the 1 st note of the E scale , E . It also contains the 7 th note of the scale , D #. That E is functioning as the add4 of the 5 chord . Yikes ! That ’ s a lot of numbers .
The term “ add4 ” relates to the 4 of the chord itself , not the key you ’ re playing in . So , if you ’ re playing a Badd4 , think of the root , third and fifth of the B chord . Those notes are B , D # and F #. If you add the 4 to the chord , that means you play the fourth note in the scale above the root of the chord . That note is E . This is a foundational concept , since in this article and my last or any discussion of pad voicings , I ’ ll talk a lot about playing the 1 and 5 in the key . That 1 and 5 is the first and fifth notes of the scale you ’ re