 Hi guys so welcome to part 4 of this series on how to make an existing chord progression, a pop chord progression a bit more colorful and we are now going to cover another very very simple concept called slash chords. So a slash chord by simple definition is a triad, any triad which you know but with a different base note. So if you take a note a chord like A major normally we play A with A right but you can play things like A in the right hand but D in the base. So it's quite a simplistic approach it's not something it's not like you are reinventing the wheel I would imagine it's just that the same triad you learn can now have a different base and that makes it sound a lot more colorful because all the tensions like the 9s the 11s and the 13s are all brought out by the slash chord. So whenever or rather when I started learning chords which were beyond triads this is the first thing I realized I used to see this symbol C slash D or A slash G and I would always ask the musicians the band like what is that sound what is that chord and they would all tell me play A or give me a simpler version but then what I learned was the base sound which the bass guitar used to play and the guitar sound were very very different. So it's definitely a very exciting sound which I found back then and I use it till today to also understand some really complex jazz chords where you say 11 sharp 11 flat 13 sharp 9. So instead of writing it in that way you can also do it as triad different bass note. So it could be an easier way to play some of the more complicated songs. So let's see what I've done and let's look at a couple of tricks as we are voicing it. So you have the D major chord as always I'm taking the same chord progression 1 6 2 5 D major B minor E minor A minor A major. So normally we play D major here and D here. So now I'm not going to change the bass note I'm just going to play a different triad here maybe the A triad in other words A major and A major anyways part of the D major scale right. So you play A major and a D here and then you can do B root with an F sharp minor triad in the right hand or in the treble and the good thing about this voicing is it brings out some of the extended harmonic sounds like F sharp is the fifth that's normal A is the seventh or minor seventh and C sharp is the ninth. So it's automatically bringing out those colors in the chord similarly with the D chord you have the five you have the nine and sorry you have the five you have the seven major seven and you have the nine. So let's see how it sounds again D A major with D bass F sharp minor with B bass because it's still inherently a B minor chord and then I do E bass with a B minor. So for all these three chords whether you're doing a major chord or a minor chord a simple trick will be take the bass note which you anyways were playing climb up a fifth. So fifth from D is D E F sharp G A and play that one's major or in the event of a minor chord play the root move up a fifth 1 2 3 4 sorry 1 2 3 4 5 and play that one's minor chord right so B's fifth F sharp play F sharp minor which we've written down in the note sheet and similarly I have another minor chord which is E minor what do we do again move up a fifth D minor with E and finally with A you can play an E minor with an A but what we like to do since A is a dominant sound and it takes us back to the tonic or D you can also play like a G major sound a G major in the right hand with a A bass in the left hand right can also make it even more exciting by playing a triad which is not even part of the scale like C it just seems to work right so let's see how this whole thing sounds once more it's G over A G with A bass you can also experiment with different inversions of the chord or just roll it up and down the keyboard with your sustain pedal on maybe up agitate it right so slash chords are used the way I look at slash chords is you can use it either to make something a bit more sophisticated harmony wise or more jazzy as they say or you can also use slash chords in a passing manner so let me just try and show you that maybe with a song we all know let it be by the Beatles right so a more jazzy way to play it could be what we've written down in the chart you're just making the A just sound a bit more jazzy so that's like the more sophisticated version however you can also use passing harmony or passing slash chords as I call them I think I just came up with that right now but anyway so a passing slash chord is nothing but a four going to one with the one bass so if I take a D major chord I find its fourth D E F sharp G the fourth and you play the G and then resolve it to D so that means in one bar you need to play two chords earlier you were playing one chord now you're playing two chords so that's your D major with a bass and then a major so why did the D work because it's a four from A and it has that passing function now that's a very beautiful sound right there you're playing a C major which doesn't even have notes in the scale you have C which is like an illegal note because it should have been C sharp but it works because of that passing function right so a lot of artists like Ellie Elton John and Billy Joel tend to use this sound a lot especially a lot of progressive musicians like Dream Theater Rush and Emerson Lake and Palmer to name a few so when I find myself in times of trouble mother Mary comes to me comes to me while the jazz version or the sophisticated version when I find myself in times of trouble mother Mary comes to me I quite like both actually so I think it really depends on the way you are using it perhaps the singer in your band has a certain vibe or perhaps the way your band is grooving the genre are you going for like a rock ballad kind of thumping kind of effect or you just going for a very laid back relaxing feel of the song and any song any song written when you play you can obviously add your own interpretation to it so these sort of tricks I think can really help and try to master it not just on D major which I taught now try to map it down and try to write it down on a few scales right so this is about slash chords which make your chord progression sound very sophisticated jazzy as well as add that passing ability the four to one which I explained right so try to also click the link in our description to to get some more information and also revise what we've learned thus far in this entire lesson and that'll really help you you can download it and also we urge you to share this video with your friends and more importantly subscribe to our channel right now like right now okay bye thanks