Chord help please

1. I need to play D7 chord

http://www.ukulele-chords.com/D7

This tells me play the notes A D Gb C.

(Note that Gb is the same note as F#. Someone elsewhere told me there's no Gb but F# )

However the song that I'm playing tells me to play D7 and the tab pictured says (2,0,2,0) which tells me to play A C Gb A.

Why does it tell me to skip D, and play 2 A's??


2. I need to play Am/G chord

http://www.ukulele-chords.com/slash-chord/Am-G

This tells me to play G C E A. (0,0,0,0)

However, a slash chord means G needs to be the bass. The above does not give G as the bass. In order the chords are C, E, G, A.

There are two notes below G and one above G. I don't understand.

Yes, I can play that G as the base, then move the rest of the notes an octave higher... but that would be inconvenient as I have to move around, and also it sounds weird because the rest of the chords are an octave lower.



Can someone please help me with my questions, thank you very much.

I just went to Jim Beloff's workshop last night and he explained #1 !

(2223) A D Gb C is the standard D7 chord.
(2020) A C Gb A is the Hawaiian D7 chord. The root is not included but can be assumed by the listener (the listener fills it in). Played this way it is not as harsh sounding as the standard D7.

Thanks Jim!

Forget about the slash chords on the ukulele. Unlike on a guitar you simply don't have enough bass strings - possibilities are simply limited with four strings only. The 0000 could make sense on a linear tuning (coz you have the low g string there), but with re-entrant I would go for a normal Am (2000) instead.

Someone told you wrong about Gb not being a note. There's a whole major Gb Scale. It has 6 flats.

Shastastan said:

Someone told you wrong about Gb not being a note. There's a whole major Gb Scale. It has 6 flats.

Click to expand...

I don't think that the OP was necessarily being told that Gb is not a note but that the correct "spelling" of D7 chord is D F# A C.

Its important to understand that Gb and F# are the same note. If you play an "F", and then move it one fret higher it will become and F#. If you play a "G" and then move it one fret lower it will become a Gb. Both the F# and Gb will occur at the same fret. They are "enharmonic", which is just a fancy way to say that there are two names for the same pitch.

The correct way to spell a D7 chord is D F# A C because D7 occurs in the key of G major which is made up of the notes G A B C D E and F#.

The 2020 D7 chord has enough of the chord tones to convincingly create the sound (3rd and 7th being most important), and when used in a sequence of chords, the root (D) isn't completely necessary because the ear tends to hear it as "implied" and kind of fill it in. This "suggestive" chord voicing is very common on stringed instruments where you only have the ability to play as many notes at a time as there are strings.

The Am/G is actually a "3rd inversion" Am7 chord. A "normal" Am7 chord would be spelled A C E G. The "3rd inversion" means the 7th is the "bass note". A 1st inversion chord would have the 3rd in the bass, and a 2nd inversion would have the 5th in the bass.

On ukulele most slash chords can be played in any inversion since the range of bass notes is so minimal that its usually not possible to get a convincing "inverted" chord sound.

0000 is indeed an Am7 (A minor seven) chord. 2433 would also be an option.

Sometimes slash chords are written to let the bass player in a group setting know that they should play the suggested inversion instead of a root position chord and don't necessarily apply to the people playing the chords.

I hope this helps answer your questions a little bit, the theoretical stuff seem very backwards and confusing sometimes!

@Johnny GDS

I wish I knew even 1/10th of the stuff that you do. If you're not teaching music, you should consider doing so. Your explanations are concise and easy to understand. I've looked at some different music theory books and some go on and on and on...That's okay for a music major, but some of us only need minimal knowledge to make it through a song. I really like the way to answered the question as applied to the uke also.

Oh, I forgot to mention that there is also an F# major scale (in addition to the Gb major scale). It has 6 sharps. Yup, this stuff can get confusing..

Thanks for the kind words Stan! The theory stuff can get very confusing, but its fairly simple if you can find a straight forward explanation of it. I do teach music and really enjoy talking about music theory. Feel free to let me know if you ever have any theoretical questions or anything, I'd be glad to throw in my 2 cents worth of free advice.

Thanks for the offer, Johnny, but I'm not smart enough to ask an intelligent music theory question. Hey, what can I say? I'm a trumpet player