WEBVTT

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Hi! How are you doing? Justin here.

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In this lesson today, 
we're gonna be checking out slash chords.

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Now, slash chords have nothing to do with 
Slash from Guns 'n' Roses

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before you get a little excited

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and think we're gonna learn Sweet Child O'Mine.

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Slash chords also,

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sometimes confused as being 
two chords at the same time.

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You often see stuff like D/F#.

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It's amazing how many guitar players 
just freak out and go:

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"Oh, I can't play it, it's two chords at once,

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I don't know how to do that."

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But it's actually really, really, really, simple.

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All it is, is a chord, "/" and then a base note.

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So if you see D/F#,

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it means a D chord with an F# note in the bass.

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It's actually pretty simple.

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And the coolest thing about it is,

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if you ever see a slash chord,

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and you don't know the whole slash chord,

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or you've never played it before,
you can't work it out immediately,

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just play the chord, the first part.

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Ignore the slash and what's after the slash 
'cause if you're playing in a band,

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probably the bass player 
is gonna be playing that bass note anyway.

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So you don't really have to do it.

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On guitar it kinda sounds interesting sometimes

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to be using a different bass note,

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so that's why they exist on their purpose.

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Now, what I'm going to take you through is three of the most common slash chords.

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We're gonna do a nice little close-up now,

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and I'll run through, not just the chords, but

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how they're most often used.

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Here we go, here's the first chord

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that I'm going to show you,

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which is a D with an F# bass.

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Sounds like this:

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♪

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and I know what you're thinking,

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you're thinking: "Oh, It's just like a regular D". But...

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actually, my thumb is playing this note here:

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this F#. (Plays)

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Now, for many of you doing the thumb-over technique,

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it's gonna be a little bit difficult.

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So, I'm gonna show you some alternatives,

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but this is my personal preference 
most of the time,

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from playing D with an F# bass,

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is to use my thumb on that bass note.

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Now, the other alternatives...

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If you think, there's your regular D chord.

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If you move your thumb over to play the bass note,

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and move each finger around,

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so you still got a regular sounding D,

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and you move your 1st finger over.

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That's another pretty decent way of playing 
a D with an F# bass.

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♪

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The only problem with this one is 
it's a bit difficult to use in context.

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Now, the context is usually G,

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♪

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D with an F# bass,

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♪

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Em.

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♪

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'Cause that way you get this.

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♪

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So you can see, there is where we're using big G.

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♪

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Now we got that 3rd finger anchored, 
thumb comes over.

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♪

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And even, you can leave that 
3rd finger down

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and play the Em7 if you wanna be really clever.

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♪

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But here's another way of doing it,
which is very common.

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So, playing G,

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♪

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D with an F#, so

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first finger, muted the A string,

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Open, 2nd finger, 3rd finger.

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Now, very often,

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the open E rings out as well.

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Now, it shouldn't 'cause that really makes it

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kind of a Dadd9 chord over F#,

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or something complicated like that.

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It doesn't really matter.

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It's just a D over F#,

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you accidentally hit the open string

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and it sounds cool.

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♪

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So, the only other way, sometimes,

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it's played like that.

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Now, I don't tend to play it that way a whole lot,

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but you can use: 2nd finger, muted the A string,

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open string, 3rd finger, 4th finger 
and the open E string,

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or mute the E string,

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with the outside of your little finger.

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You can choose with that one.

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So, it's a very common chord there 
to go between G,

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♪

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D with an F# bass,

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♪

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and Em.

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♪

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OK, the next one I'm gonna show you,

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is this chord here, this is G with a B bass.

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Now, this one normally goes between Am and C.

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So if we have C, G with a B bass, Am.

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♪

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You can hear you get:

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♪

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And again, there's a few options 
for playing this one.

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You can think of it like... there's a regular G.

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If we just don't play that thickest string,

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♪

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we've got there a G with a B bass.

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But as we know already,

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there's a few different ways of playing G.

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And the two methods I prefer, either:

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2nd finger on the 2nd fret of the 5th string,
little finger on the 3rd fret of the 2nd string,

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♪

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and then the thinnest string is muted.

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Sometimes, (plays)

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I let the open E string ring out on this one as well,

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which you shouldn't,

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it's not part of the chord, but it sounds nice.

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And remember, if it sounds good, it is good.

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Little finger also can move down 
onto the thinnest string.

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♪

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That's also a nice G with a B bass.

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♪

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And leave it there for the Am until we get an Am7.

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♪

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Very cool little sequence.

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So, there's your couple of variations for 
G with a B bass.

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Now, the last one I wanna show you,

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this is a bit old-school. (Plays)

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And this is a C chord,

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but we're adding a G in the bass.

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So all we're doing is moving our 3rd finger over,

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and whacking our little finger down.

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♪

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And there we have a C/G.

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♪

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I like this one 'cause it got a really fat, warm sound.

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In fact, you can often substitute this one.

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It just says C, you can play this chord instead.

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Really sounds pretty cool I reckon, so

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Regular C, move that over, little finger goes down,

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there's your C/G.

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Now the important thing to remember 
with slash chords

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is you can kind of just make them up.

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You can have any chord with any bass note.

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So, just some examples that
I can give you really quickly:

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here's an Am chord:

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♪

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If we put down our little finger here,

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♪

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we could have Am/C,

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Am with a C bass 'cause that note there is C.

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Or (plays) Am with a G bass.

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♪

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Because that there note (plays)

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That there, that there'd be G, that note there.

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And then we could have, say, Am with an F# bass,

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so we just have to refinger the Am,

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so let's do a regular Am, but then

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♪

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we'd have there, an Am with an F# bass,

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also known as F#m7b5,
if you wanna impress your friends.

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♪

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And, back to Am.

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You can really have anything at all.

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You can have an A chord with a C# bass.

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You can have an A chord with a D bass,
if you wanna really stretch yourself.

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♪

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You can make up anything.

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And that's the cool thing with these slash chords.

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You can literally make up any one, and people do,

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and that's how they get 
pretty cool sounding chords.

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Comes from piano players 
'cause they separate their hands.

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They have one hand playing bass,

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and one hand playing chords.

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So it's very easy for them 
to swap the bass note around.

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It's a little bit harder for us to do,

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but it sounds really effective.

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So, have fun with these slash chords,

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give them a little bit of practice,

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practice combining them as well,

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doing the G, D with an F# bass, to Em,

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and the C, G with a B bass, to Am.

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That's definitively one of the key things to practice,

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linking those other two chords.

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There are some exercise on the website,

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go check'em out, have fun,

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and I'll see you for an another lesson very soon.