I’ve finally gotten onstage and starting playing in a band. In the tablature that they give out, many of the chords are some note “over” a chord. Such as F#/D or F#/G for a song in D. What’s going on with these, and what chords can I play that compliment them? It seems more like the first note is the bass line moving to the next note. Oh, here’s the progression:
D F#/D G A
D F#/G G A
Em F#/D G A
D F#/D G A D
It looks like the way a 7th note transitions from the V chord to I, but we are going from I to V.
Quite often the slash chord would give a nice transitioning sound between chords. This one doesn’t sound very good to me. Using the F# major in the key of D isn’t so unusual, it’s just a III7 which might be used before the V chord (A). The “over” notes here just sound a bit odd but if that’s what the songwriter wants then that’s fine if they like it. As for substitutions, hard to say, I’d probably just play F7 and not use the slash notes.
If you think of the notes in terms of chord type then F#/D would be a #5 so maybe an augmented chord here. F#/G would be a b9 so maybe an F#7b9.
