The D-C-G Trick : What Famous Bands Did With Easy Chords!

Hello everyone, my name is Jonathan KIU, welcome to the music corner for the next 30 minutes. We'll give you some tips on how to become a better guitarist and help you expand your repertoire of songs and have more that you can share. with friends and family and your fans who want to hear you play guitar now in today's episode I call it the dcg

trick

because there's a

trick

involved here that I hope you take with you and use not just to play other people's guitar. songs, but also to create your own songs, a million songs have been written using this trick that we are going to talk about today.

There's no reason you can't do the same, so let's get started with today's episode. Let's say we will focus on rhythm guitar, which means we will play many

chords

with a specific rhythmic pattern, as opposed to lead guitar, which would be playing a solo or improvising with one or two strings at the same time. let's continue here DC and G now. I hope you have at least a passing familiarity with the D C and G

chords

. Let's go over them right now real quick if you haven't mastered these chords yet, today is the day to start doing it especially the G chord because when we get to G you'll see that there are a special way.

I want you to play the G chord. For today, okay, let's start with the D major chord, so the D chord with our left hand here the D chord involves three fingers middle finger second uh second fret first string ring finger third fret second string and index finger third string second fret now if you look closely it looks like a triangle the right center ring pointer forms a nice triangle type of shape now,

what

you don't do is also important when you strum a chord, you definitely don't strum the 6th fat string here, okay, the other five are fair game, but the D chord doesn't sound good with that low, boomy E string.

The strings vibrate there now, if you already know your D chord, let's move on to the next chord in this sequence today, the C chord, C major, index finger, second string, first fret, middle finger, fourth string, second fret, ring finger, fifth string, third fret. Now this is where things are. Get interesting, the G chord that appears in a second here can be played in more than one way, in fact, we're going to use a couple different ways in today's show, but

what

I want you to do with your C chord now to as you progress. The G chord is going G in a very specific way, so let's take a look at the left hand, we're on this C chord here, your middle and ring fingers, middle and ring fingers here, go up a string, okay, they're on the same relationship. they were on the C chord a minute ago but now they're on the two thickest strings middle finger fifth string second fret ring finger sixth string third fret index finger off the guitar pinky string thin three okay, now let's focus on the left hand here and notice how smooth it is to go from C to G this way.

I hope it seems

easy

. I've been doing this for many years, but whenever there's a C chord going into a G chord in a sequence like that, it makes sense. to make G with those three fingers, your index finger is free waiting its turn to participate, okay, pinky in the middle and it rings, now many of you probably already know your DC and G chord, so let's talk about what you can do with DC and G, well, there are a lot of

famous

songs that have that specific chord sequence in that order from D to C to G, okay, that might sound like to me, it sounds like Van Morrison singing Gloria right there, okay, and that's one of approximately a million songs out there. written not only with those three chords but specifically in that order at that time I was doing two strums on G uh two strums on D one strum on C and one on G so d d CG d d c g c and if you can't change chords so fast let this one be your motivation, your inspiration to get to those chords quickly, switching between chords is a real challenge for beginner guitarists and, uh, repetition helps and having a song that you know and like can help you a lot and also give you a motivation to practice your D C and G then D twice C once and g once and if you know that song pretty well, you'll know that there's a part in the middle that has a little bit more of a fancy rhythm, but it still uses those chords, okay, they're still D , C and G, so many. other melodies have that central progression.

I'll illustrate a few more in a second, but stay tuned if you're doing a good job on your DC and G and this looks kind of

easy

in a minute. to show you a fancy way of doing it that also appears in many songs meanwhile in regular D regular C regular G uh, what if that could sound? Bell to Werewolves of London. I'm throwing in something extra with my pinky. Okay, but that brings us to the London Werewolf Stadium. What I was adding, by the way, was that I had my D chord with my left hand.

I was adding on the 4th fret of my third pinky string, that note makes a good difference, especially if you focus on your choice and make sure the listener can hear that string specifically, make sure they can hear it a little louder than they normally would. Otherwise you could listen to it, okay, werewolves, werewolves of London, now another classic could be Sweet Home Alabama D C and G too. and now nobody owns these leads, D C and G, but a lot of people have found ways to write classic songs using D C and G and there's no reason why you can't do the same thing now, when things get interesting is when, uh , guitarists, rhythm guitarists, composers.

Start adding extra sounds in there, like we did a minute ago in Werewolves of London, you know, that kind of Riff, just adding an extra finger or doing an extra thing can give your D C and G some personality, okay, I mentioned a minute ago. There are ways to spice up this D C and G relationship, so let's get to that right now. This is something that applies to specific songs, but you can also use it for any song that uses D C and G as the heart of es for its chord progression. I'm going to play for a minute, let's focus on the left hand and then I'll talk about what I'm doing.

Here comes DC and G G done in a slightly new way, okay. A little twist to become more colorful. sounds there, the only thing that stays exactly the same as before in the program is D, the D is the same as the D we were playing 5 minutes ago, okay, but the C and the g I'll show you some changes. That's why I call it the dcg trick, that's our show today, the dcg trick, because what we're going to do gets a great sound that's great for songwriting and learning our classic songs that have already been written. that uses this trick, so here we go, the conductor works here and this is important, so pay attention here, everyone with the ring finger on your left hand, the ring finger will stay on the second string, third fret, throughout the time, okay, look at my ring finger. it's there, whether you're doing the D or this new modified C or this new G, that ring finger will never move now, it may slide a little bit, but it will never come up off the guitar as soon as you pick it up off the guitar it will slow you down. and it will get in the way of your nice smooth rhythm, so the D is the same as before 2 32, that is, second fret, third fret, second fret, gives a nice strum, just avoid the fat string there. sounds a little boomy and not so harmonious now here comes the new C ring finger ready stays where it's stuck down there index and middle jumping over where they go index 4th string second fret middle finger fifth string third fret so now I have a version a little strange of a C chord, the C chord adds n.

I'm avoiding the thick string on this version of C, it just doesn't sound as good, the other five are fair game, ready to review here D, the traditional D major chord ring finger stays index moves over one and ring finger half reaches there, so now we have the ring finger where the second string was, the third fret, the index finger fourth string, the second fret, the middle finger, the fifth string, the third fret, okay and remember we counted the strings 1 through six starting on the smallest string so 1 2 3 4 5 six is ​​the fast string so here's our C chord add n listen to how it sounds coming off D here's D here's C I should call it a chord C add9 D and C add9 ok ready for the final step this is the easiest index in the middle up one string index plus fifth string second fret middle finger sixth string third fret ring finger where it's always been there now pinky adjust it right there thin string first fret Okay, so ring and pinky look like that pinky on the thin string ring on the second thin string index fifth string second middle fret sixth string third fret there's my G chord now this particular version of G has no other name no It's called G something uh now I think of it as the chord that the Beatles used for the hard days, so to me this is the G for the hard days, in fact we blessed can talk about that melody in a minute about how the Beatles went from uh uh G to C ad. n, but we'll get to that in a minute, okay, so let's do a quick review.

Many songs go in dcg order, meaning the chord progression is that D C and G order, regardless of how they are strummed. Now you know what. the right hand strums down or up or fast or slow the left hand plays D to C to G it's a great sound it's a classic sound now what we're talking about is how over the years composers and rhythm guitarists they've taken it dcg sound and somewhat embellished using a d A cad9 chord and A a fancy G like I said, I call the hard days night g many bluegrass guitarists play this version of G because I like the ringing sound you get from those two thin strings are pressed on the third fret, so Sweet Home Alabama, for example, I'm playing it a little slower than the actual song just to illustrate what an ad chord is like for two beats and a c or c chord on n for two counts and a g for four to D twice C to nine twice and G I noticed that my ring finger stayed there the whole time, my ring finger wasn't moving anywhere and that kind of stability makes it a lot easier , so for many of you it's going to take a little bit of attention to keep that ring finger pressed down while doing some tasks that you know are relatively complicated.

It will save you trouble in the long run if you keep that ring finger glued down as soon as that ring finger goes up, you are wasting those little microseconds that you know make you sound less than professional on the guitar, a lot of people when they change chords it takes them a fraction of extra second to go from one chord to another, at least when they're starting out and it's frustrating because obviously the songs have a rhythm, the songs happen in real time and those little microseconds that I call are what separates a beginner from a more advanced player. experienced, so at any time you can get your way, at any time you can do something. some kind of trick that saves you that's worth doing that split second, so D C9 G I should give you another example of Marshall Tucker B and can't you see?

I think the official sequence goes d c add9 g back to D again, so there's a d at either end of the sequence d c add9 g back to D again and it's that c add9 that really adds such a cool variation to the standard dcg chord progression which is really where we're getting a kind of A Soulful type u sound that a regular C major just doesn't give us and then that four finger G which has a nice country sound on its own there too, so To do a quick recap, we have a lot of our standard classic chord progression sound of D C and G.

Of songs have been written using those three chords in that specific order, so we show you a little twist that, in my memory, is a twist that you can find in songs like Sweet Home Alabama and can't you see it? the Marshall Tucker Band itself D this C adds n and then this bigger version of G okay now I mentioned a hard day at night a minute ago as far as I know The Beatles start that song with that G chord once you know When does the singing start? in and they move look at this, they move basically to that c they add n chord again although they keep both fingers down it's been a difficult day night very subtle I started with that four finger G, let's call the four finger G I just move my index and middle from the two thickest strings, uh, your A and E strings up to the D and A strings and that the name of that chord is still C ad9, that's been a big difficult trick, right?

And today I'm using that word specifically idea of ​​a left hand trick um if there's one thing I can identify because I've been playing guitar for quite a few years now it seems like I know more tricks than when I started and if you think about it's your skills like tricks like Part of a bag of tools that you can reach in and pull out when you need them, it keeps you with a joyful approach to learning to play guitar instead of seeing everything as one big challenge. or an obstacle, you know, think about just learning some tricks, you never know when you're going to need those tricks or those tools, okay, the hard days and nights are related to whatwhat we are doing here today, now let's go back to the original premise. which is D C and G, there are a lot of songs that take this a step further and you'll see what I mean in a minute, the songs are still basically D to C to G, but they use some kind of extra trick here and so many songs make these great songs, classic songs worth checking out today, it's worth spending the time and figuring this out, you're ready, okay, that sounds like anyone, possibly, huh, sounds good to you, if it occurs to you ? more than one song that uses that then you are a true master of musicology, many songs have this specific riff, in fact some songs are so similar that it is really only the melodies that are different, um or the general arrangement of the backing instruments, the idea here is that we're taking the D and basically going to that CAD #. depending on exactly what song we're talking about and then we go a little further to create this nice descending sound, so if you've thought about the same songs that I'm thinking about, I'm talking about Dear Prudence by The Beetles uh a white room by cream and Eric Clapton, how about playing Neil Young's Damage Done?

Now these songs are so similar from a rhythm guitar standpoint that it's worth spending a little time talking about them. to play it again, okay, what I did there reminds me of all those songs I just mentioned and probably many more, maybe you're thinking of some I hadn't thought of, but let's talk about what's going on here. chord to start with now, depending on what exact song we're talking about, what happens next might VAR slightly, but stay with me here, we have the D chord, what I did at that point was I played my open D string, my 4th string, right there, the fourth string. and then strum the rest of the chord now look at this my middle finger just my middle finger is going to reach right here that's the C note by the way in case you don't know it's a C note fifth string third fret I'm going to play that one note specifically and strum the rest of the four thin strings, so far we have D, just move your middle finger, okay, now look at this, my ring will stay, my index finger will find the fifth string on the second fret.

I'm going to play that note and my index finger. This is complicated. A way back to the first fret. Now I'm going to play it slowly and then I'll tell you from a theoretical point of view. What's going on? Here, in terms of um, the music theory behind this, but I'm going to play it slowly, here comes the D, it extends over the note C, the tip of the finger grabs the note B and that B becomes a B flat. I remember the first time. I realized this kind of way of playing guitar. Sounds like two different guitarists, right?

Ringing sound that seems to be floating in the background at exactly the same time, so when done right it gives the illusion of two guitarists. It is certainly difficult for a beginner guitarist to even imagine how a guitarist could do everything. that sound, I know I couldn't understand it until I started learning this trick and tricks like this, so a minute ago I mentioned that we weren't going to just learn how to play it, but I want to talk about what it is. passing, you heard me use a phrase a minute ago that going down the baseline we hear the note D becomes a note C becomes a note yes becomes a note B flat it's like there's one instrument playing while another instrument play those light chords tone those other thin strings in the background, so I would call it a descending baseline from D to C to B to B flat and if you look closer, you can even see, you can even see that my open fourth string , my open D string, and then seeing how that middle finger is three on the a string, two on the a string and one on the a string, it's a relatively sophisticated sound, you know, pop music for rhythm guitar is beautiful and rewarding and makes you sound fantastic as a guitar.

The player is fine, so I mentioned tunes like Needle in the Damage Done and Deer Prudence by The Beetles. uh, I need Neil Young's Damage Done, of course, Eric Clapton's white room and cream. Everyone uses this trick, probably with slight variations from tune to tune. next, um, but with a little time invested in learning this dcg trick, you're on your way to mastering those three tunes and like I said, there's probably more that I'm not even thinking about right now, but those are three classics that come in mind and there's no reason why you can't write your own melodies using that riff, apparently everyone else is doing it so you can go ahead and do it too, so let's go over it one more time, the old chord standard D major. no surprises it's the middle ring and Pinky, sorry, the middle ring and the pointer with the index finger, there you have it, the second chord in the sequence simply involves moving the middle finger, the third fret of the fifth string.

Look at it right there, now we could give this chord a couple. different names for our purposes, let's call it a, let's call it a variation of a C chord, someone else might call it a D chord with C in the root, which means it's a D chord with C is the new low note that probably be the best name, the best name for it, but for our purposes we are considering it as a kind of substitute for an old C chord D chord this variation on a C chord with the index finger now, believe it or not, I'm going to pause right there, this chord, I'm playing the B b note index finger fifth string second fret and ring finger planted where it's always been planted right there that's actually a G chord, you know what it is , it's this big four-finger G chord without the pinky and without the middle finger and I'm concentrating on my strumming and I hope you are too on the inner four strings.

I'm not playing the thin one or the fat one and they just don't sound that good, so we have the middle finger on D, which is a variation of the C chord, um, uh, two. finger version of the four finger G chord and then coming back we call it G minor sometimes you can have more than one name for what's going on here however what we're talking about now fits our description of the dcg world . and all the

famous

songs have been written with those three chords in that order and the way that composers have taken those chords and found new things to do with them.

If you remember musically, you know a song like Gloria that Van Morrison sang. Talking about maybe 1964, you know a great rock and roll riff, and as time goes on, rhythm guitarists discover other cool things you can do, whether it's John Lennin around the time of The White Album, which it would have been the late '60s. I think making this sound or Eric Claing and Cream doing it for a white room or maybe the early '70s, either Marsh Tucker Band on Can't You See or Butter Skinner with Sweet Home Alabama, everyone seems to be doing this and and you might also like that that famous riff is built into those three regular D chords, this C in n and G, okay, a lot of music comes out of those three chords.

I'm going to pause here for a minute and thanks for watching. Uh, you've been checking out the music corner. My name is Jonathan K. If you have any questions, questions, comments, please feel free to email or call us. I would love to hear from you. Today's episode was all about the dcg hack. all the things you can do with dcg that have been done by great guitarists before and maybe I've inspired you to think about some ways you can take those three chords and do a lot with them too, so thanks for watching. I'm going to play some more DC and G and hope to do more shows in the future, thanks for watching.