Chord Substitutions Workshop Revisited

Published: Wed, 07/07/21

. At the time, I'd heard from a number of people that while they were interested in what I was teaching in The Fingerstyle Five, they weren't down for the ongoing commitment of a monthly membership. Cool, I thought – I'll make something for people like that, something you only have to show up for once. I modeled the first one on the in-store clinics I once gave to promote the release of my Acoustic Guitar Method. A couple of hours on a specific topic on a Saturday morning, only this would be even better, because instead of just attending live for a couple of hours and getting a few handouts, you'd also get a replay afterwards, allowing you to review the material as much as you liked for the next few months. Awesome, right?

Well, the topic was popular, and the live stream went pretty well, but there were a couple of hitches. One was that people already in the membership were confused – did their membership cover this new workshop, too? It didn't, because it was invented, I thought, precisely for people who were membership-averse. And the whole three-months thing was confusing, too – I thought having months of replay was super generous, but people tended to compare it to a download you own forever, and felt frustrated that they couldn't count on having the material around to refer back to for as long as they were interested in it.

Finally, it turned out a big percentage of the audience for the workshops was, in fact, existing members. Who knew? I started hearing that the workshop material, which tended to provide an in-depth approach to general blues topics like improvisation or chord voicings, made the perfect complement to the song-specific approach of the  membership lessons.

So this month in the membership, I'm doing an encore presentation of that first workshop on chord substitutions. I'll live-stream the material this afternoon, and this time, if you're in the membership, you'll automatically have access, and instead of the three-month limit, you'll continue to have access to the entire replay for as long as you maintain your membership. In addition, the workshop replay will go into the membership archive like any other monthly lesson, and anyone who joins in the future will find they have access to the entire workshop as well.

So if you missed the workshop the first time around but would like to know more about how to find and use chord substitutions on the blues, you can join the membership now, attend the live stream this afternoon and have access to the replay for as long as you stay subscribed. Plus as a member you'll have access to almost two years' worth of monthly content: not just solo fingerstyle blues songs to play, but also step-by-step lessons on how to improvise on those songs and turn them into complete, performance-ready arrangements. Plus access to a vibrant membership forum where you can post your work, ask questions, get insight from other members and geek out on all things fingerstyle blues related.

This new live stream will include all of the original material from last November plus new examples created expressly for this presentation. You can find out more about the Fingerstyle Five membership and sign up at the link below:

Join the Membership

If you'd like more details about the workshop or are wondering why you'd want to learn about chord substitutions in the first place, I've reprinted the original workshop explanation below.

More soon,

David

P.S. In the name of transparency, here's how the numbers work: the original workshop cost $47 and you had access for three months. If you join the membership now in order to catch the workshop, it'll cost you $20/month for as long as you stay subscribed. In addition to the workshop itself, you'll now also have access to all the other membership content, including the entire archive of lessons and songs, and the membership forum. And yes – you could totally sign up for a month of membership, check out the workshop, download all the tab, and skedaddle in the first thirty days, all for twenty bucks. But if you decide to stick around, you'll get all the membership material, plus a rad workshop on chords, all for the same, uh, low low price (minus the Ronco Vegematic).
 

CHORD SUBSTITUTIONS AND HOW TO USE THEM

Deepen and broaden your fingerstyle blues vocabulary! In this two hour workshop you'll learn:

Why Chord Substitutions?

What's the number one things you'd like to improve about your fingerstyle blues playing? Is it having more ideas, so you don't feel like you're playing the same things over and over? Is it breaking out of the usual I-IV-V with some different chord voicings? Or is finding out what those hidden sounds are? You know, the cool, jazzier-sounding changes you can hear going by in other people's playing but can't quite locate for yourself on the fingerboard?

Lots of guitarists, faced with these questions, conclude that what they really need to do is learn more chords. And learning chords is a great starting point. But if you don't know what to do with them, they remain just that – a great starting point. On the flip side, you can learn a whole bunch of theory about things like 9ths and 13ths, or tritone substitutions, but if you don't have a way to turn them into usable licks, they won't magically (dang it!) find their way into your playing either.

Chord voicings refers to the different ways you can play similar chords on the fretboard – in various positions, with different fingerings, etc. Chord substitutions means the ways you can swap in those voicings for the ones you already know – and the reasons why. One of the best ways to expand your sounds and ideas on the blues is to take the basic I-IV-V, 12-bar framework, and learn, a couple of bars at a time, a few particular chord substitutions for those bars and the voicings you need to play them. Then move on to the next couple of bars, and go through the same process.

Working through the whole 12-bar progression this way will not only help you build your chord vocabulary. It'll help you come up with new licks, too. Just  playing familiar licks over new chord changes can give those licks a whole new sound. And ultimately, you can use those new chords themselves as a springboard for new melodic ideas altogether.

Chord Substitutions – And How To Use Them

Years ago, I wrote a book called The Acoustic Guitar Chord Book, a reference companion to my Acoustic Guitar Method and Acoustic Guitar Fingerstyle Method. My wife was profoundly bullish on the project, convinced as she was of the popularity of the concept. "Everyone needs a chord book," she observed. "My first guitar book was a Happy Traum chord dictionary!"

I personally had never owned a chord book, making me perhaps an odd candidate for the gig. Still, I plowed ahead, buoyed by Ms. Fretboard's conviction that this was the project to make the family's fortune – or at least pay for a few rounds of fish tacos somewhere along the way. In fact, writing that book only convinced me of what I already suspected: it's not enough to learn more chords.  You need to learn where to use them, and how to incorporate them into the things you already know how to do.

Because the blues is based on a seemingly finite situation – twelve bars (maybe eight or sixteen), three chords (maybe four or five if you're getting fancy) – it sure seems like you could brighten things up by throwing some additional chords into the mix. But which chords, why, and how?

"Chord substitutions" is just the idea of swapping in different chords for the usual ones, or adding additional chords to the existing progression. If that sounds like the possibilities could be sort of endless, you're right. So for this workshop, I've narrowed the options down to a dozen of the most important, frequently-encountered moves so you can really get your hands and brain around them in short order.

Not only that – I've designed the material to make it as simple and logical as possible for you to fold each potential idea into your playing as quickly as possible, by organizing them as two-measure ideas you can immediately drop into a particular moment in the blues progression.

More specifically, for every two bars of the blues in E, we'll look at two different ways to navigate those bars. You'll wind up with twelve fully tabbed-out examples, each incorporating one particular chord substitution idea into a completely playable two-bar steady bass lick. All the examples are designed to fit with each other, so while I'm not one hundred percent on the math, I'm pretty sure that gives you a total of 64 ways to play through the blues in E before you start to repeat yourself, and that's just if you stick to the examples in this workshop.

Join the membership, take the workshop