move your hand around a lot, if you’ll discipline Chord yourself to preserve common tones when Soprano A A something pretty conspicuous to me. Even if
possible you may discover that your playing Lower notes E E you don’t keep a common tone on top of your
begins to sound more like what you hear on C# D voicing, there’s a note for the next chord that is
A D2
worship recordings.
Seeing these chords in a table like this makes
a neighboring note in the scale, so you don’t
Now, rather than the A being our only option have to move any finger very far to get to a
for a soprano note, the E can be placed there. needed note.
chord being used in the place of the 4 chord Chord And all of this matters why? Because I want to
that occurs in each key. Thinking in the key of Soprano E E sound stylistically like what I hear on modern
A again, the 4 chord is D major, spelled D F# Lower notes C# D worship recordings. I’m thinking you do too.
A. These three notes are each given a number A A Think about how you voice your chords,
Another thing I’m sure I’ll hear a lot of as I
work on my two lead sheets is an alternate
A D2
above the chord’s root, or bottom note. The
especially in terms of what chord tone you
D is 1 (root), the F# is 3 (third) and the A is 5 Make time to sit at your keyboard and call up put in the top of your voicing, and I think you’ll
(fifth). Not exactly the Pythagorean theory, but a piano sound or a pad sound. Play these find that creating modern voicings becomes
the numbers matter here. So, that alternate various voicing options. It will probably sound more and more instinctual for you. With time,
chord I’ll probably hear is the D2 chord. Refer pretty familiar to you since voicings like this are you’ll look over a chord chart for a new song
to my earlier list of the 7 notes in the scale and so common on recordings today. and find that without even thinking about
look for the note that occurs just after the D.
these concepts you naturally start recognizing
Got it? Yep. It’s the E. So, rather than playing Here’s a chart showing you the notes of the 1, common tones. God bless you and those ten
Root, 3 , 5 , a common chord used is Root, 4, 5 and 6 chords in the key of A. For each I’m fingers of yours. And that brain that tells those
2 nd , 5 th . That’s commonly called the D2 chord. placing the root of the chord on the bottom. fingers what to do.
The notes are D E A. Remember that where the notes of your song’s
rd
th
chords go under your fingers is your decision.
And that matters why? Because choosing to
use the D2 chords makes another common Chord A
tone available for our voicing options. Soprano Lower notes
May 2019
D D2
E F#m
A A E F# A B C#
E G# A
C# D D E F#
Ed Kerr
Ed Kerr lives in Seattle with his family. He serves as
worship arts director at First Free Methodist Church,
teaches keyboards in Paul Baloche’s leadworship
workshops and is a clinician with Yamaha’s House
of Worship. He also manages the Yamaha Worship
Facebook group and invites you to join the group.
www.KerrTunes.com
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