Hi, could explain how to add passing chords to a chord progressions.
Difficult to explain without making it a long detailed lesson.
First, let me say I’m no expert on this subject, especially if we’re talking about jazz which takes things to a whole new level … to a point where they no longer sound like passing chords 🙂
For the rest of us, it’s often more about voice leading and using common ideas. The main thing about passing chords is they should sound like they are going somewhere, so for this reason we don’t tend to hang on them for too long. For instance, one idea might use a diminished chord a semitone below the target chord. Let’s say a progression like G to D7 …
G/// D7/// G/// D7///
That’s four bars of each chord. You could put a Db dim two beats before D7 i.e.,
G/ Dbdim/ D7///
Secondary dominants are also used quite often. In other words, use the V7 of the chord you are targeting. Let’s say…
G/// D///
D is the target chord and the V7 of D is A7 so you could play this.
G/ A7/ D///
Another common idea is slash chords. Let’s say C to Am. like this.
C/// Am///
You’ll often hear something like the bass note moving from C to B to A. If we play these notes in the bass (lowest note) of the chords we end up with ..
C/ (C/B)/ Am///
I’ve put the slash chord in brackets to separate from the “beat” slashes.
C over B (C/B) could also be views as a Cmajor7 so you could play
C/ CM7/ Am
You could also carry that through to the Am, something like this.
C/ CM7/ Am/ Am7/
The possibilities are many. Most of the time it’s based around what you might hear in your head as a melody line that leads through the chord progression. Find that melody and add the notes to the chord. You could just think of them as the note added to the chord or you could figure out what the chord name might be, for instance … as above if we add B to C major then we get C major 7.
We can take it further and look for chords that then use similar notes. For example, C/B has the notes C E G B. If we take away the “C” we end up with the notes in Em. With this in mind we could replace the C/B with Em, this would make the above progression become..
C/ Em/ Am///
Like I said, this is hard to explain in a short lesson and it’s not something I often think much about. Over the next few weeks I’ll do some experimenting and see if I can come back and add more about it.
Hope that helps a little 🙂
