10 Amazing Minor Chords Hacks That will Open Up Your Creativity!

Intro
All right, minor chords, let’s do this!

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Welcome and Overview
Okay, so how’s it going, everyone? Today we’re going to talk about minor chords, and to be more specific, how to improvise over minor chords. What I’m going to do is record a few loops and demonstrate some techniques that you can start using and putting into your improvisations. Hopefully, these will give you some cool ideas.

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Creating a C Minor 6 Vamp
Let’s begin. The first thing I’m going to do is create a C minor 6 vamp. Here’s my root, my 6, my flat 3, and my 5. It’s going to go like this:

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One, two, three, four:

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One. Okay, so we got our loop now. I can demonstrate some stuff.

Triads and Improvisation
First of all, you gotta know your triads, right? We’re talking about C minor here. Here’s our C minor triad:

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Here’s the first inversion:

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And this is the second inversion:

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The first thing is that I’m just going to improvise using those notes:

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Expanding Beyond the 1st Set
Now I’m going to other sets of strings. I can see my second inversion over here. That is by connecting the different sets, which you can check out on my website [wiseguitar.com] inside the Galactic Modern Guitar Series.

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Adding Rhythm
You see, since I’m adding rhythm, it’s starting to sound like music:

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Approach Notes
Now, these are approach notes. I’m kind of aiming back and forth from my third back to my fourth, and it’s still around the triad, but I’m using some notes to create cool sounds around that triad. These are chromatics:

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Enclosures/Chromatics
Approaching around the chord tones, I can also do the same kind of enclosures to other chord tones like the flat 3:

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And if I connect them, I get this:

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Let’s do the same thing to the root:

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And we get this:

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Using Other Inversions
Okay, now the next thing we’re going to do is the same kind of stuff to the other inversions. Here’s the first inversion. Let’s do the same kind of enclosure:

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See that kind of stuff:

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Kind of like a cage surrounding that note.

Target Tone Awareness
Here’s my target zone:

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Here’s my target tone again:

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Once again:

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Introducing the Diminished Triad
Now I’m going to introduce another triad that is going to give me another sound, and that is the diminished. The seventh diminished degree. If this is my first degree, this is going to be my seventh diminished degree. Let’s play both of them:

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You see, this is kind of a vamp. Now let’s do it over here with the root position:

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So this is a root position diminished chord. I’m going between the different root positions: root position of C minor and root position of B diminished.

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Here’s my second inversion C minor and here’s my second inversion B diminished. Let’s play with those:

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Triad Pairs Jazzed Up
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Passing tones and chromatics to combine all of those together:

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You see how you’re starting to get some cool sounds. Now it’s a good time to introduce the element of the melodic minor harmony. So we get a minor degree, followed by another minor degree, followed by an augmented degree, a major degree, another major degree, and then we have diminished, followed by another diminished.

The Sweet Sound of 6ths
So all together we have minor, minor, augmented, major, diminished, diminished and moved back.

Connecting the Dots
So now it’s time to connect these over different sets, different inversions, and combine everything we talked about:

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So these are kind of like leaves. I can create intervals within my scales. For example, this example was six:

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And of course, the ideas are endless. Now, in order to be able to improvise over chord changes, one-chord vamps, and understand what you’re doing, you need to be able to start seeing all of these elements—like the scales, the different triads—and always know where you are so you play the guitar instead of the guitar playing you. Meaning that harmony and melody need to be understood on the instrument, and it doesn’t really matter what style you play—it can be blues, jazz, new soul, hip-hop—you still need to have very strong fundamentals.

Galactic Modern Guitar Series
And the best way to approach having strong fundamentals is going through a very specific system that can guide you and give you resources to connect all the bits and pieces. It’s definitely something I wish I had when I was getting into this stuff. That’s why I invite you to check out my Galactic Modern Guitar Series, where I show you all the different steps together in 15 modules. I cover triads, voice leading, arpeggios, different chromatic approaches, how to connect everything to start creating phrases, and how to get into seven chords. It’s all packed into 15 modules with over 96 videos.

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So go check that out. The link is in the description below. Let me show you exactly how you can start mapping out the entire fretboard to not only solidify your fretboard knowledge but also to start unleashing your creativity.

Outro
That’s it for today. If you’re interested in checking out a very cool arpeggio workout, check out this video over here: