Acoustic Lesson 16 - Slash Chords

Last lesson we talked about fourths and seconds but even more befuddling to me when I first began playing chord charts were slash chords. They looked like this A/C#. (And no they are not chords that are commonly used in Guns and Roses songs).

I never knew which note to play for the chord. It was something that I had never encountered in my piano playing days. Should I play the E or the B for the chord? Should I play the E and then really quickly switch to the B? It never really worked out for me until I learned the secrets of the slash chords.

A Slash Chord is simply a chord, the first chord we see in the fraction followed by a note that is to be played in the bass of that chord. For an A/C#, instead of starting with an A in an A chord, start with a C# (the third of the chord) in the bass. In tradition music this is called an inversion. An inversion is anytime you rearrange the notes in a chord. To play a fifth chord can sometimes be tricky…sometimes it’s easy. Here is a common D/F#.

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Sometimes slash chords can be very tricky to play though and take some rearranging of the hands. Lets take a look a this E/G#. 

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As show in these examples the slash chord often puts the third in the bass but this is not always the case. In some cases you will find a slash chord where the new bass note is not even in the chord, such as in this A2/F#. There are other ways to name to name this chord but often in worship or pop music you find these chords. Here is what the A/F# would look like.

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Try to find way to invert some other chords and use them in a progression. Here is a good one to use.

E     E/G#  C#m  B/D#   A    B    E

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