What are the slash chords

I don’t have any articles about them. I’ll add it to the list but other things to do first.

In short, slash chords are just an ordinary chord with a note other than the root played as the lowest note. Example, C/G is pronounced “C over G” and it means play G as the lowest note.

Here as a typical C major chord with the root “C” in the bass.

Here is C/G. The same chord but with the G in the bass.

The note doesn’t necessarily have to be a note in the chord. The notes in C major chord are C, E, G. We could play C/B which would put B in the bass and will look like this.

The notes in C/B would actually make this a CM7 chord but we often use slash chords instead to make sure something is played as it should be. You will hear this kind of thing in many songs. For example a chord progression like C, Am, F, Dm, G7 could be played with a melodic bass line something like this.

C, C/B, Am, Am/G, F, F/E, Dm, G7/A

You could break down these slash chords and name them according to the notes they contain, i.e…

C/B = CM7

Am/G = Am7

F/E = FM7

G7/A = G9

So technically you could play the whole chord progression like this.

C, CM7, Am, Am7, F, FM7, Dm, G9.

The problem is that even though the above is technically correct, it might not sound right, especially if care isn’t taken over which chord position / voicing is used.

By naming the chords as slash chords we ensure that the chords are played as intended so that the melodic bass line stands out.

This is all of course just one example but the idea remains the same whenever slash chords are used.