Chord Of The Week 8/4/17 - an E/G# from "What Can I Do" by The Corrs

bigjon

Posting this a day early as I'm busy tomorrow. After last week's April Fool sideshow, I want to get back to the open-voiced chords from the intro to the song "What Can I Do" by The Corrs. I covered the first chord A5add9 5xx45x three weeks ago, the second chord in the progression is

E/G#: 4xx45x

The eagle-eyed among you will spot that this differs from the first chord of the progression by a mere one fret on one string - the A root-note 5xxxxx of the A5add9 is lowered to a G# 4xxxxx. This makes the notes low-to-high G# B E, which is the first inversion of a regular E triad E G# B. E is the V chord, but the voice-leading in the bass down to the 3rd of the V chord rather than clunkily landing on the root softens the dominating 'Dominant' effect of the 5 chord in a way appropriate to the middle of a progression rather than the end.

It's a useful compositional exercise to take a basic chord and see what effect you get from shifting the note on one string by one fret!

You can hear this week's chord at 0:03 in this video - 

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 192 discussions at
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/598/chord-of-the-week-index