Chord Of The Week 4/3/17 - an Aadd4 from "Run To You" by Bryan Adams

bigjon

One of many instances of the "slide a chord 2 frets up, pick the strings in a random arpeggio pattern and see what happens" trick. The main riff is Em7no3rd / G Aadd4, but with a capo on fret 2 so it sounds as F#m7no3rd A Badd4. Ignoring the capo, this week's chord is

Aadd4: 540xxx

played as an arpeggio picking the strings in the order 5 4 5 6. This gives the notes C# x4xxxx (the 3rd), D xx0xxx (the 4th), C# x4xxxx again, and A 5xxxxx (the Root). The cool-factor comes from having the C# at fret 4 on the 5th string ring out against the open D 4th string a semitone away.

Like I said at the start, this trick works well with other open chords. Try sliding the following chords 2 frets up & creating an arpeggio picking pattern to bring out the clashes with open strings and a fretted note just below - 
E: 022100
C: x32010
Am7: x02010
Fmaj9: 1x201x

You can hear the chord (remember there's a capo!) at 0:04 in this video

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 187 discussions at
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/598/chord-of-the-week-index

brojangles

The "slide a chord 2 frets up, pick the strings in a random arpeggio pattern and see what happens" trick is pretty much 90% of my guitar technique, and quite a lot of the rest is "the same but sliding it 7 frets up".