A songwriting experiment: Beyond your chord comfort zone

I’m sure I’m like most songwriters when I say I sometimes get stuck in a chord rut. You know, just the same few progressions over and over again, until I realize that the new song I wrote is really, really similar to the last song I wrote. 

I’m also a bit of a slave to the capo. Is it laziness? Is it the Zen feeling of slapping a capo on the guitar and just playing those same old notes in a new key? Who knows. 

In any case, yesterday my friend (and touring songwriter and Manhattan Songwriters Circle founder) Pat Wictor came over and gave me a guitar lesson. I wanted to learn to play an actual riff to a cover song I’m working on, but it really turned into a lesson in expanding my chord and note horizons within my songwriting. 

Here’s what Pat had to say about not being afraid to “branch out” beyond your chord comfort zone: 

“A lot of songwriters just don’t think about expanding their chord vocabulary,” he says. “They’re like, well that’s an A chord and I can’t move my finger somewhere else, that’s an illegal chord, that’s not a real chord, how can I possibly play that. Well, yes, you’re allowed.” 

Pat says he often just takes a chord he knows and experiments by moving the notes down fret by fret, with the same or similar fingering, and seeing what kind of chord results. Or, he’ll try some notes in between the chords he’s on — say he wants to get from an Em to an Am but the song sounds kind of dull, with no movement, so he’ll add some movement with some filler notes — again, just experimenting to see what works with where your fingers are. 

“If you start thinking about it in that different chords often share the same notes, so that you can move a few notes up or move a note down and it might sound good, it can free you up,” he explains. “I think many songwriters think of a chord as a fixed entity, like a slab of granite that doesn’t have component parts, but I think of a chord more as a collection of ropes all laid next to each other. You can take one and move it up a little bit, while keeping another note in place. That’s what a chord progression really is.” . 

Want to break out of the same old progressions? Pat suggestions learning some cover songs — ones that have some ear-catching elements. “If you learn those it will increase your vocabulary,” he says. He adds that he also often does a couple of exercises — such as taking a song he plays normally and then putting on a capo and figuring out how to play the same key with different fingerings. “Let’s say I’m playing a song in G, just regular cowboy chords like G, C and D. If I put the capo on the 3rd fret and I play in the same key, I have to finger the G chord as an E chord. And that can suggest some other little grace notes and melodies with the new fingering.” 

Finally, he says he fools around with open tunings to experiment. “I’ll just tune down the first string, say, to D, if I’m sick of what i’m playing. Then, I’ll play the same old chords in the new tuning and just see what happens.” 

Thanks Pat! I don’t consider myself so spontaneous — I admit that I’m one of those songwriters who can feel like it’s “illegal” to stray from the tried and true. But I’ve already tried some of Pat’s suggestions and it’s fun…so hopefully you’ll give it a whirl, too.