BGU Little Chord Question

[MichaelBenedict]

hey guys, I'm finally going to buckle down and actually work through the BGU class I bought 2 years ago (hopefully). I'm on the little chords section and I see how Griff starts out. by showing the full A7, then breaks that down into a little chord by just playing 4th string 5th fret and 3rd string 6th fret. Makes sense to me, I can see who those same two notes are buried inside of that full A7 bar chord. Now, once he gets into the example he switches to b flat as the one chord, sounds good, I see how that same little chord shape just moves up a fret...got it. Here is where I get stuck however. When moving to the 4 chord, or e flat, he just moved down a fret which looks to be the exact same little chord as the a7 that we started with. how can the a7 little chord and the e7 little chord be the same thing?

I have not doubt the answer could not be easier but I just figured I'd ask for a little help.

 

[tommytubetone]

The notes in an A7 chord are A Db E G
" " " a Eb7 chord are Eb G Bb Db. Both chords contain a G and a Db, which is what you're playing with the two note little chord. So it works.

 

[Paleo]

The thing to realize is that while you're fingering the same 2-note little chord shape, the 2 notes are different scale degrees/chord tones in the "complete" 7 and 9 chord shapes.

Looking at p 19 in the BGU manual:

In the A7 chord shape those 2 notes are the b7 and 3 of the chord.

In the D9 and E9 chord shape those 2 notes are the 3 and b7.

Just the reverse.

A nice coincidence we can put to use.

We can play the 2 most important notes of each "complete" chord with one little chord shape.

Even though the "complete" chord shapes are different.

(If you're familiar with CAGED chord shapes you could consider these to be E and C shapes, respectively.)


Moving to the Bb example on the next page:

The the 2 notes in the Eb9 are the 3 and b7.

Which just happen to be the same frets as the b7 and 3 of the A7 chord in the previous example.


(However. technically in the A7 we would call the b7 and 3 G and C# and in Eb9 we would call the 3 and b7 G and Db.)

To me this is a good example of how each of the same 12 notes we have to work with can serve different functions in different situations.

 

[MarkDyson]

FWIW, some time back I realized that the 2-note "little chord" shapes for the IV and V are also taken from the moveable C7 chord shape. At least for me, that helped me a lot in visualizing the "why" of how they work.

 

[Paleo]

Another thing to realize is that wherever you play the shape as a I chord, it would also be the IV chord of the key a half-step up as well as the V chord of the key a half-step down.

With the b7-3 interval inverted to 3-b7.