James Lee Stanley

I was rehearsing with a wonderful guitar player the other day and as we were playing the song for the first time, I was calling out the chords. I played a standard E minor and then playing the simple D min finger configuration, played another inversion of the E minor on the third fret. (If you play a simple D minor and then, keeping the same fingering, slide it up two frets, you are now playing an E minor –provided that you only play the strings you are holding down).

He looked up as I changed the inversion and asked what chord that was. I explained that I simply changed the inversion to give it a different sound, and I realized that this dovetails into what I was talking about the other day regarding learning all the places that each chord exists on the neck of your guitar.

You know, where all the D chords are, where all the E chords are. Learn where those are first and then you can start learning where the extrapolations of those chords are, but I digress.

Here’s the deal. If you are playing a song by yourself on one instrument and you always play the same chords in the same place, you get a static arrangement. One that is not too interesting or compelling.

Now if you play the verse with an inversion of some chord up the neck and you only play the strings that you are holding down (no bar chords, please), you will get one sound.

Okay, now when you go to the chorus of the song, play that chord down the neck as low as you can play it. You get a deeper, louder, fuller chord down there and that makes the chorus seem bigger.

Changing the inversion of chords allows you to alter the texture of the song in a sublte way which makes it more interesting and enjoyable to the listener.

Another thing that makes the chorus bigger is to only strum all the strings when you are doing the chorus. Try some other approach on the verses.

Finger picking, arpeggiating, just doing whole notes and singing against them. Something different and smaller volume wise than what happens when you get to the chorus.

This is such a simple way to make a song more interesting and more impactful. Doing the same thing with the guitar or piano or whatever on both the verse and the chorus make the verse and chorus sound the same. You want there to be a discernable difference between the presentation of the verse and the chorus of a song. It just makes the song work better. Trust me.