Chord Of The Week 29/10/16 BEATLES CHORDS - a C chord from 'Blackbird' by The Beatles

bigjon

The second main chord of Blackbird after last week's root chord of G (x 10 x 0 12 x) is the IV chord C. To play it, Paul McCartney just uses the same chord shape moved down 7 frets, with the open G on the third string now functioning as the 5th of the C chord. This gives a triad but with a pleasant open voicing. To get a regular C triad, start at middle C on a piano, miss the next white note up (D) but play the next one (E), miss the next white note up (F) but play the next one (G). For the open voicing, take the middle note of the chord (E) and move it 7 white notes up, so the order of the notes in the triad is C, G and E low to high. To play this on the guitar (it sounds an octave lower), play the closed triad as C x3xxxx, E xx2xxx, and G xxx0xx. Now move the E an octave higher to xxxx5x, which gives us this week's chord

C: x3x05x

I was under the impression that the original was played in open G tuning DGDGBD, so today's C chord would be x5x05x, but in this live performance McCartney is clearly in standard tuning. He plays the C chord at 0:23.


A Bonfire Night-themed chord next week . . .

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 170 discussions at
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