Lady Marmalade chords

hotpickups

Can someone tell me why the chords for Lady Marmalade which are Gm7 and C but I feel the chords BbMaj7 (without actually playing the Bb) and Cmaj7 sounds nicer. Or even G9 and Cmaj7. All horses for course I guess Unless I've got the wrong chord names down. Wouldn't be the first time lol

viz

Because Gm and Bb major are relatives, they share the same key signature, and C major and C maj 7 are the same chord, only one has the 7th added. G9 shouldn't work. Are you sure it's not Gm9?

hotpickups

Ah that'll be it. Pretty sure it's a G9. What would be the fingering for a Gm9 then @viz ?

viz;1070572" said:

Because Gm and Bb major are relatives, they share the same key signature, and C major and C maj 7 are the same chord, only one has the 7th added. G9 shouldn't work. Are you sure it's not Gm9?

viz

355335 or 357333 or the like. But I'm not good on correct way to play chords, so bigjon or pip or any of the others would be better to help you. I'm ok on theory but not playing it!

monquixote

I do Gm7 and c9

hotpickups

C9? Just tried that and feel it doesn't work for me. How are you playing it ?

monquixote;1070630" said:

I do Gm7 and c9

viz

Probably he's doing x32333. I hadn't heard the song before. I've just listened to the first few seconds.

The first chord, the G chord, has to be minor because the piece is in G minor. So you can play:

G minor: 355333, x 10 12 12 11 10
Gm7: 353333, 355363, 353363, x 10 12 10 11 10
Gm9: 353335, 3133(3)(3), 357333, x 10 8 10 10 10

You can't play G or G7 because they both have a major 3rd, or Gmaj7 because that has a major 3rd and a major 7th, both of which aren't in G minor.

For the C chord, it's a C major (which tells you by the way that the song is in G Dorian mode - with a minor G chord with a major 6th, which becomes the major 3rd in the C chord. This tells you you could also have played Gm6, 353353. That's true of almost all i-IV songs, like DLR's coconut grove, The Shadows' Apache, etc). Anyway, for the C chord, the options are:

C: x32010, x35553, x7333x, 8 10 10 9 8 8
C7: x32310, x35353, x35557, 8 10 8 9 11 8
C9: x32333, x35333, 8 10 8 9 8 10.

You can't do Cmaj7, because the maj refers to the 7 not the 3, so as well as having a major 3rd (which is correct), you would have a major 7th, which is incorrect (x35453). You might just be misnaming it and actually playing C7, which has a major 3 and a minor 7, which is fine - see above.

The Bbmaj7 without a Bb is the notes DFA, which are in the chord Gm9 so it would sound ok though a bit odd without the G itself.

hotpickups

viz said:

Probably he's doing x32333 - should sound ok

Well that is how I would play it but just doesn't feel that much different tonally to me. Maybe like how I play it depends on what the bass player is doing.

I think I stick to my chords I'm using

monquixote

viz said:

Probably he's doing x32333 - should sound ok

Indeed I am

EricTheWeary

According to Wikipedia two guitarists on the original including Leo Nocenteli. I followed some YouTube lesson with him once and that C9 played x32333 was his stock chord. Anyway, sometimes it's a chord you'd chop down a bit, probably starting with the root, so it becomes xx2333 - getting out of the way of the bassist.

hotpickups

EricTheWeary said:

According to Wikipedia two guitarists on the original including Leo Nocenteli. I followed some YouTube lesson with him once and that C9 played x32333 was his stock chord. Anyway, sometimes it's a chord you'd chop down a bit, probably starting with the root, so it becomes xx2333 - getting out of the way of the bassist.

Well it's open to interpretation isn't it. Seems to work better what I am doing but that's not to say it's totally right LOL

Roland

monquixote said:

I do Gm7 and c9

Ditto

hotpickups

I forgot to mention that I am not basing my version on the original LOL. It's a funked up version ")

viz

hotpickups said:

EricTheWeary said:

According to Wikipedia two guitarists on the original including Leo Nocenteli. I followed some YouTube lesson with him once and that C9 played x32333 was his stock chord. Anyway, sometimes it's a chord you'd chop down a bit, probably starting with the root, so it becomes xx2333 - getting out of the way of the bassist.

Well it's open to interpretation isn't it. Seems to work better what I am doing but that's not to say it's totally right LOL

Have a look at my (edited) post. Maybe you're misnaming your maj chords?