Creative Chord Transitions

Hey guys, I'm new here and I just started the Ukulele. Right now I'm just going through the chords and memorizing notes and things. I just wanted to ask for some creative ways to transition between chords like arpeggios and different chord voicings. I think to play a chord in arpeggio you would need to play the 1, 3, 5, 1 notes in order but it doesn't sound like it in a lot of songs that are heavy with hammer-ons and the like. What are some creative ways to fingerpick a chord?

Also with chord progressions, you can play a different version of C to go from C to F right? For example C - C7 - F? I don't know the rules but does this work with other variations like minor chords and suspended chords?

bunch of questions in this one, luckily I have a bunch of opinions. As far as arpeggio style goes you might enjoy trying the 5th and 7th of the original note/chord. Technically a arpeggio tends to be the 1st 3rd and 5th but the 7th is still very much pleasing to the ear. Since I've picked up the banjo, I've been really big into picking as well as transferring that to ukulele. My favorite picking is the 2,3,1,4 strings, that is if you want to stick specifically to that chord.
using chord sevenths, sixths etc. is difficult to pull off a lot of times. Switching from C to C7 (if you're singing) often means you have to change your singing pitch or often facing being dissonant. If you're playing something where the changing the singing pitch won't matter too much (such as a little known song, or one where you've decided to take liberties with it) transitioning chords is best done in my opinion (if you don't want to just switch without a transition) is to alter the chord by changing one of the notes to its adjacent note in the scale. Say switch a C to a D or a Bb to a C within the chord. So you could switch from a G in 0232 to a Gsus2 in 0320. That specific one is actually fairly common, such as in the song "Tonight You Belong to Me" (if you're lazy like me and don't tune the ukulele down anyways)
I would say the ideal way to add some more beef to your chord playing to switch from one chord to the other. Say the song is a chord progression of FGCGC. During the F, alternating between an F and a C during the chords during might be something you should try. It's really trial and error by that method. I'm just guessing on that particular one, but trying it out on different chords should end up with a pleasant result.

CheshireMoose said:

Hey guys, I'm new here and I just started the Ukulele. Right now I'm just going through the chords and memorizing notes and things. I just wanted to ask for some creative ways to transition between chords like arpeggios and different chord voicings. I think to play a chord in arpeggio you would need to play the 1, 3, 5, 1 notes in order but it doesn't sound like it in a lot of songs that are heavy with hammer-ons and the like. What are some creative ways to fingerpick a chord?

Also with chord progressions, you can play a different version of C to go from C to F right? For example C - C7 - F? I don't know the rules but does this work with other variations like minor chords and suspended chords?

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You know, I have never thought about anything like that. I just change and play whatever sounds good. I will say that your technical knowledge is way better than mine and I am slightly jealous of that. I'll just agree with Citrus. BTW welcome to UU posting

Citrus said:

bunch of questions in this one, luckily I have a bunch of opinions. As far as arpeggio style goes you might enjoy trying the 5th and 7th of the original note/chord. Technically a arpeggio tends to be the 1st 3rd and 5th but the 7th is still very much pleasing to the ear. Since I've picked up the banjo, I've been really big into picking as well as transferring that to ukulele. My favorite picking is the 2,3,1,4 strings, that is if you want to stick specifically to that chord.
using chord sevenths, sixths etc. is difficult to pull off a lot of times. Switching from C to C7 (if you're singing) often means you have to change your singing pitch or often facing being dissonant. If you're playing something where the changing the singing pitch won't matter too much (such as a little known song, or one where you've decided to take liberties with it) transitioning chords is best done in my opinion (if you don't want to just switch without a transition) is to alter the chord by changing one of the notes to its adjacent note in the scale. Say switch a C to a D or a Bb to a C within the chord. So you could switch from a G in 0232 to a Gsus2 in 0320. That specific one is actually fairly common, such as in the song "Tonight You Belong to Me" (if you're lazy like me and don't tune the ukulele down anyways)
I would say the ideal way to add some more beef to your chord playing to switch from one chord to the other. Say the song is a chord progression of FGCGC. During the F, alternating between an F and a C during the chords during might be something you should try. It's really trial and error by that method. I'm just guessing on that particular one, but trying it out on different chords should end up with a pleasant result.

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Thanks for the long reply! As for the chord arpeggios I understand that you should always end up on the root note but for many songs I just don't understand the pattern of getting there. Is it just trial and error of just what sounds good as well as scales?

CheshireMoose said:

As for the chord arpeggios I understand that you should always end up on the root note

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Fooey, I say!

I've never heard of such a rule, and if I did, I'd probably ignore it.

Just play the notes in the chord how you like. Where you start, where you end up, and what order you play them in matters not.

JJ

Well, this is all theory stuff.

if you're switching to a chord say... D
then you need to find the "dominant 7th", which is 5 notes up from the one you're trying to get to in this case D and then you add a 7th so an easy way to get to a D is an A7 chord.

That's why the C7 to F works.

As for minor chords it's a bit different, it depends of you're playing in a minor key rather than the relative major key.

So, let's say you have the chord progression C, Am, F, G, G7
Most simple chord progressions are made up of the Root (C), IV (4) (F), V(5) (G) and/or V7(5,7) (G7) and somtimes vi (minor 6th) (Am)
So we know that this chord porgression is in the key of C

But say you're doing something like Am, Dm, E7
Then this is in the key of Am because in minor keys the IV is usually minor so it becomes a iv which is in this case Dm, and the V stays major but in minor keys is usually V7 so it becomes our E7

If the minor is in a major chord progression then it cannot be altered to a 7 because the next chord is most likely not it's fifth.
But if the minr chord is in a MINOR progression then it can be altered into a 7 because it the next chord ( in the minor chord progression above) is it's fifth.

For different types of transitions, let's say you have a Gm and then a Eb.

Well, if you look at these two chords they have three notes in common, the G, the other G and the Bb
So, you can play these notes while transitioning into the next chord and then play the next one.so if it were tabbed...

1 | 1 | 1
3 | 3 | 3
2 | x | 3
0 | 0 | 0

This is an easy transition.

or you can use a four finger roll. right at the end of the last chord to transition back.

If you have a sus chord then it sounds like it has to be resolved, to be resolved it must return to it's root chord.

so like say you have a G sus(4) then you just return to the G and it sounds good.

If you have this chord progression, Bb, Gm, Eb, F,

then three of the four chords have a common note: Bb

so for a transition, you can have a common picking pattern. like C, D, Bb

So here it is in tab

1 | 3 5 1 | 1 | 3 5 1 | 1 | 3 5 1 | 0 | 3 5 0 |
1 | | 3 | | 3 | | 1 | |
2 | | 2 | | 3 | | 3 | |
3 | | 0 | | 0 | | 2 | |

For the last one though you have to change it a bit so it fits the chord so you just change the last note to an open fret.

Hope this helps a bit...
if not then there are a whole lot of sites on the interwebs that you can find just search chord theory... or something