"Color" Chords in Worship: A Primer

In my work with church music teams, I address a handful of the same things, many times over from location to location. Mostly, it comes down to refocusing on the fundamentals, but there's also a point where instrumentalists need to break beyond the plateau of basic chords and dive into "juicier" voicings that elevate their sound. 

In these next few sections, we'll talk about how to transform your basic chord shapes and rhythm playing into something that amps up your playing while making it fit within contemporary tastes and practices. 

Let's dive in!

"Color" Chords: Going Beyond the Triad

Many players start off learning triads, which are chords that consist of a root, 3rd, and a 5th. The 3rd and 5th can be altered to change the quality of a triad, resulting in these types:

• Major

• Minor

• Augmented

• Diminished

In worship music, we tend to only see major and minor chords, so that's what we'll focus on today. (Don't worry, we'll dive into the other two in a later post!) Whether you play keyboard or guitar, the typical beginner to intermediate player settles on just a handful of voicings for their arsenal of chord shapes—which is a GOOD thing! You internalize the basic framework of how the notes should sound in combination. But, we need to alter those shapes to add color into our sound. These "color" chords are the types you need to learn to accompany melodies more accurately and add more interest to your palette:

• Suspended chords

• Add chords

• Seventh chords

• Extended chords

Suspended chords replace the 3rd of the chord with either a 2nd or a 4th. The key to using them effectively and appropriately is timing the resolution of the suspended 2nd/4th back to the 3rd at the right time. Generally, if a melody is highlighting the 3rd of the chord, you don't want to employ a suspension. But if the melody lands on a suspension, double that note by modifying your voicing to a sus2 or a sus4, and then resolve at the same time as the melody (if a resolution indeed takes place). You'll mostly see this on tonic chords (1 in the Nashville Number System) or dominant chords (5 in the Nashville Number System).

But what if your melody stays on the 5th chord, never highlighting that sus2/sus4 moving to the 3rd? Generally, you can make the call to use either a suspended chord or a basic triad, or switch between the two to create tension and resolution around the melody that is being sung or played. Just be sure to work out the timing with the rest of the band, locking it in with tightness and precision.

Add chords are related to suspended chords, but they add a color tone into the voicing while the 3rd is also played. This is where the tension of half steps and whole steps in relation to the 3rd of the chord create a sort of "shimmery" effect—and it works GREAT for contemporary sounds. Common add chords are as follows:

• add9

• add4

Typically, you'll only see add9 chords used for the tonic and subdominant chords (4 in the Nashville Number System). You're probably familiar with the somewhat cliché movement from G to Cadd9, where you hold a D note through both voicings, usually during prayer time or soft vamps. 

Add4 chords are somewhat new to the lexicon of chord voicings, and you have to be careful in how you play them. Because you're adding a 4th while the 3rd is ringing, the half step created between them has to be treated in a specific way. Let's examine how to construct a Dadd4 voicing the right way and the wrong way. (The pitches will be listed from low to high, no octave displacements.)

• Dadd4 (right way): D–F#–G–A; D–G–A–F#

• Dadd4 (wrong way): D–F#–A–G

So why is there a "right way" and a "wrong way" to construct this chord? It all comes down to where you place the F# and the G. Those notes must be placed apart either by a minor 2nd (F#–G) or a major 7th (G–F#). Our ear hears them as palatable dissonance, which we like. The "wrong way" produces a minor 9th (F# up an octave to the G above). This kind of dissonance is usually reserved for extended dominant seventh chords, which function in a very specific way. Due to how we move from chord to chord in a song phrase, this dissonance ends up being non-functional, which our ear usually regards as unpalatable. 

Seventh chords might take you back to a cheesy G7 moving to C, or a D7 moving to G, but these chords can be "hip," too! Try using a major seventh chord, moving from tonic (1) to subdominant (4). Here's an example in the key of D:

• D: D–A–D–F#

• Gmaj7(no3rd): G–D–G–D–F#

The F# is the common tone that connects these chords together, creating a palatable dissonance that is pleasing to the ear. 

Extended chords move beyond the seventh, going into 9s, 11s, and 13s. For worship music, we typically only see maj9 and m11—but the world of extended chords is VAST. You'll see them in everything from pop to jazz to R&B and everything in between. For worship music, you can treat the maj9 much like you would any maj7 chord, where you can typically connect chords with common tones to create interesting colors.

• D: D–A–D–F#

• Gmaj9(no3rd): G–D–A–D–F#

What about several complex chords in a row? You can connect Dsus2 to Bm11, G6/9, and Asus4 in the same way:

• D: D–A–D–E

• Bm11: B–A–D–E

• G6/9: G–A–D–E

• Asus4: A–A–D–E

The key to many of these extended chords is that you end up superimposing a core shape or sound (i.e. A–D–E, above) over a changing bass line. So it's less about nailing the technical information and more about embodying the overall sound implied by the melody and accompanying color tones.

The Bottom Line

Here's the thing: Complex chords (and their symbols) really only serve to highlight important melodic information and accompanying harmonies that add interest and color to the sound of your arrangement. Sure, it's good to know exactly how to spell a chord, especially when you get into dissonances that must be handled with care. But it's more important to see how that technical information fits within the larger scope of a song—don't get hung up into "paralysis of analysis!"

So my recommendation to you is this: Learn and memorize the construction of the more complex chords on your instrument, and ingrain that into your playing. Pretty soon, your ear will gravitate to using them just as you previously did with your basic triads. Then, you'll be well on your way to transcending the symbols on the page and actually start digging into artistry!

Be blessed 👊✌️