UNPLANNED DOWNTIME: 12th Oct 23:45
Why doesn't this work backwards?
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We are in the key of G. Not really in G major or G minor, we are swapping back and forth the two so often that it can be hard to say which one we are in at any particular moment. It's not exactly a blues tune, but leaning that way. The chord sequence I'm interested in is as follows:
C9: x3233x
Bbmaj7: x1023x
Am7: x0201x
Ab7: 4345xx
G9: 3233xx
Play it that way around and it is (to my ear) a very pleasing way to come back to the I from the IV. Play the exact same chords in the opposite order and it doesn't work at all.
I can guess part of the answer. The sequence starts on the IV and finishes on the tonic. In addition, the next-to-last chord is a bII7 - i.e., a tritone substitution for the V7. (So the last three chords are almost a 2-5-1.) I can see why the chord sequence wants to resolve to the root. Does that answer my question? Or is there more to it that I haven't figured out yet?
Bonus question: suppose you wanted to do something similar in style, but working up to the IV from the root? Right now I'm walking the bass up to do that, but what else could I do?
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G9 would be the V, Ab7 would be altered heading to Am, B7flat 5 would be tritone substitution of E altered( V of the relative minor key of C, Am)
my first impression just based on the progression without a specific written melody,..
Cmaj7 / C#m7 / Dm7
That is to say, the in-between chord is the same as the one that comes next. On the way down, though, same things happens, so it's
Dm7 / C#maj7 / Cmaj7
So your chord progression backwards would need to be G9 / Abm7 / Am7 - when there's chromatic movement like that, the transitional chord matches the chord it's moving to.
I haven't picked up a guitar to check your chords, so may be so far off-beam that I'm in a different galaxy, but that's what the question suggests to me.
(Pick a chord and a scale - say Cmaj7 in C major, keep it easy, why not - and move the notes up and down chromatically, but when there's a semitone play the first note twice until the other notes can catch up. You'll see what I mean.)
Basically too much coffee, sorry.
cheers,
Anyway, this one isn't right
The last note is a m3 so maybe 3232xx ?
As regards using the 4 lower strings, well, we can see you are not an acoustic player at heart. Different thing if you have a bass player to keep out of the way of. Playing solo, the low strings are the main ones.