For this arrangement I’ve threaded the melody together with fingerpicked, arpeggiated chords. With this style of playing it’s really easy for the melody notes to get lost amongst the backing notes. So it’s really important to more forcefully pluck the melody notes (indicated with arrowheads above them in this tab) so it doesn’t end up just sounding like picking practice.
Following on from the What’s the deal with sus chords? post, here’s a post demystifying another strange but highly effective chord type: augmented chords.
The Basics
On chord sheets you’ll usually see augmented chords represented by aug or +. So C augmented would be shortened to Caug or C+.
Augmented chords are very similar to the major chord shapes you’re familiar with. The only change is moving one note up a semitone (i.e. one fret higher). So to change C into Caug the g-string changes from open to the first fret to give you this:
Similarly Faug, Gaug, Aaug and Ebaug are all just one note away from their major counterparts:
If you’re on the ball you’ll have noticed that Gaug and Ebaug are exactly the same. As are Faug and Aaug. Not only that but the Gaug shape is also Baug and Faug is also C#aug. Because all the notes in an augmented chord are an equal distance apart, the same works for any augmented chord: each chord shape can be used as the augmented chord of any of the notes it contains. For example, the Caug chord shape contains the notes C, G# and E so it can be used as Caug, G#aug or Eaug.
As usual, the E chord brings up a few problems. You could play it the first way shown below but that’s a little fiddly. The easiest thing to do is mute the g-string entirely (either with the edge of your middle finger or by bringing your thumb around the neck) to create the second chord shape. Another alternative is to fret the A-string, 7th fret to create the third chord shape.
These chord shapes are all moveable so, for example, you could move them down two frets to create Daug chords:
Uses of Augmented Chords
Augmented chords sound disgusting. Compare these two progressions. In the first the progression is a perfectly nice F – G7 – C and the second is F – G7 – Caug.
If you’re anything like me your lap will be covered in vomit after listening to the second one. But when you use it properly that sound makes it very powerful in a chord progression. It propels the progression forward by making you itch for the augmented chord to resolve into something more relaxed.
Intros
Augmented chords’ mixture of suspense and melancholy make them a great opening chord. For example, The Beatles’ Oh Darling starts with an Eaug before settling into an A.
This move that’s regularly used in blues songs. A classic example is T-Bone Walker’s Stormy Monday where the notes of a Daug chord are picked out before the song moves to the root chord of G.
In theory terms, this is augmenting the V chord. This is the safest chord to augment since it’s the most tension-filled chord in most progressions anyway and will give a nice push back to the root chord.
Turnarounds
Augmented V chords also crop up at the end of blues turnarounds to add flavour to the usual sound. Here’s a typical C blues turnaround with the final G replaced by a Gaug:
It doesn’t take much to make augmented chords into an interesting progression. Here’s the intro of ABBA’s Mamma Mia which just switches between D and Daug:
The tension and release of switching between the augmented root and the root chord is so compelling you make it the majority of a song. Eddie Money’s Baby Hold On spends the entire first minute and a half switching between D and Daug. And Eminem’s Lose Yourself is composed almost entirely of a riff switching between D5 and Daug.
Another place augmented chords crop up is in progressions that make use of chromatic notes. For example, both Led Zep’s Kashmir and Bowie’s Life on Mars both have chromatically rising notes set against otherwise static chords. The “Film is a saddening bore…” section of Life on Mars uses this trick twice in a row:
Jonathan Coulton’s Chiron Beta Prime combines two tricks by switching between A and Aaug in the intro and incorporating Aaug into a chromatic line in the chorus.
Augmented 7 Chords
It’s not just straight major chords that can be augmented. Augmenting a 7 chord is doubly effective. Adding even more tension into the chord. This is why I listed Caug7 as one of my favourite ukulele chords.
Rebecca Sugar made a welcome return to Adventure Time to provide this song for the finale. Their songs are easily my favourite part of the show and they don’t disappoint with this beautiful, moving tune.
The song uses some familiar Sugar-tricks. Like the last Adventure Time song I covered Everything Stays it uses plenty of maj7 chords and has a switch from Cmaj7 to C6. Plus the move from Gmaj7 to Cmaj7 in Everything Stays is the same relative move as Cmaj7 to Fmaj7 in Time Adventure.
Suggested Strumming
If you want to avoid the fancy picking you can keep it very simple. You use just down-strums the whole way though.
Intro and Outro: Do two down-strums on all the maj7 chords and one on all the 6 chords.
Verse and Chorus: Keep the two down strums on Cmaj7 but just one down-strum for everything else.
Middle: One long down-strum on the Gm. And you can play six down-strums each on the other until D7 (two down-strums) and G7 (one down-strum). For the G7 on the last line you can recreate the fast run of notes by just hold the G7 chord and slowly brushing your fingers over the strings in an up-stroke so that each string sounds individually rather than all together as in a normal strum.
The picking starts out very simple. It’s sedately played and uses thumb and two finger picking. Things get a little more complicated for bars 15-22 where I switch to using one finger per string picking (with a quick return to in bars 27 and 28).
The picking gets much more involved in the second chorus. But the chords are the same so you can play them the same as the first chorus. Or mix and match to come up with your own version.
In that spirit, I’ve kept the arrangement as simple as I could. The verses and bridge are played with one finger per string picking building up to strumming in the chorus and middle sections.
Today is guest tab from Brazilian uker Aline Kelly. She’s one of the great ukulelists to come out of Brazil recently along with João Tostes and Vinícius Vivas. It’s been a real pleasure to see the ukulele take off there in recent years.
Aline’s performance was the first time I’d heard of Cuban composer Leo Brouwer and I immediately loved it. The switches between beautiful, flowing lines and sharp, dissonance are delicious. I recommend checking out his music if you’re at all interested in classical guitar.
Aretha Franklin put to bed the argument sometimes made by idiots that singers who don’t write their songs are somehow lesser artists. She could elevate a song like no one else. Making her version the definitive one even stealing songs from greats like Otis Redding in the case of Respect and from Dionne Warwick for whom Bacharach and David wrote this song.
I Say a Little Prayer uses a bunch of jazzy 7 and maj7 chords. I’ve notated it with a capo on the second fret (or play in D-tuning) to make the moves easier to navigate.
Suggested Strumming
A simple main strum you can use is:
d – d u – d – d u
Intro and Verses: Do the main strum once for every chord except play it one and a half times on Am7 and half a time (i.e. d – d u) on D. Which sounds like this
Chorus: The chorus is a little more complex and sneaks in a bar of 3/4. Start off with half the main strum each for C and D. Then d – d on D, u – u d – d on Em and d – d – on G7 (or d u – – if you prefer). Which looks like this:
At the end of the chorus there’s a triplet strum played twice on the C chord followed by one down-strum on B7.
Videos
