The chords lists provided here are only a tiny proportion of all the possible chords but are probably far more than even the most "jazzy" player of traditional and folk music will ever use. Currently only chord charts for Guitar, 5 string Banjo, and Mandolin (the mandolin chords should also work for GDAE tenor banjo) are provided. The fiddle (violin) chords are of course for two strings only and only for the most commonly used keys in traditional music folk music.
Conventions used: Sharp and flat chords can often be expressed in two ways, e.g. C sharp (C#) could also be written as D flat (Db). The chord spellings I have used hear are the ones I have found most commonly used in folk and traditional music circles in the UK.
Fiddle players may also care to check out the mandolin chords pages for chord ideas as standard fiddle and standard mandolin use the same tuning.
Also note that in naming the HTML files for the chord pages I have had to avoid using # for sharp in the file names and have used "s" instead, so for example the page for C sharp guitar is called "chords-guitar-Cs.htm" instead of "chords-guitar-C#.htm" this is because HTML has a special meaning for "#". So if you are linking to these pages be sure to use "s" and not "#" in the link name.
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Hints For Playing ChordsRather than trying to learn tons of different chord shapes, it may make sense (for banjo and guitar anyway), to learn just a couple, and use a capo to get the other keys. This is certainly the common practice in the fields of traditional old-time and bluegrass music, where, most players learn the "C" and "G" shapes and use a capo for any other keys. The reasons for learning at least two shape sets, and not just one, is that with just one, you may find yourself having to move uncomfortably far up the neck for some keys, also some shapes may not provide easy access to the melody notes you need to play a particular song. Some masochists may claim use of a capo is "cheating", and indeed some types of music need so much "weirdness" in the way of chords that a capo would be a hindrance, but as this site is about traditional stuff we don't talk about that kind of music on these pages. My view, as you might guess, is why suffer unnecessarily - life is to short and there are too many tunes to learn! |
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Which Chords to use for which keyEach key has a set of chords which are the ones most commonly used for that key. Each of these chords corresponds to a step in the scale. These steps are traditionally numbered with Roman numerals (don't ask). The first step "I" is the first note of the scale, for example playing in C the I is C, the II is D the III is E and so on. I have prepared a chart HERE which gives details of the chords for each key. These Roman numerals are also the basis of the "Nashville Notation" with which you may sometimes see a song notated, e.g. with I, IV, V etc instead of chord names. Examples of this in action will sometimes be seen in hastily formed scratch bands where one of the musicians who knows the song may be seen raising numbers of fingers behind his back, he is usually not being rude but trying to help out by signaling what is the next chord to be played.
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