The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

In a previous post, I stated a dirty little secret that 98% of guitarists know. It is what I like to call, "The Ghost Chord." What I stated was that 98% of guitarists use the final strum before any change of chord to lift up their fingers and land on the new chord. The result sounds smooth and like someone has been playing guitar for years. I mentioned that there were a couple of reasons why this works.

• Rhythm guitar, like drums and guitar leads, keyboards and bass, is a texture. It is much like a color that a painter would use to paint. In much, but not all, pop music that involves a guitar the texture of it is mostly filled up and present. This means that many, but not all, listeners are expecting that rhythm guitar to be full of sound for the entire song. By using the open strings like in the ghost chord, there is no drop in volume.. No drop in volume.
• Listeners of much, but not all, pop music are expecting a chord change at beat one of the next measure. There is an expectation that the listener has (to the point of bias) to hear the chord change at the top of the measure, on beat number one. Try this out if you have a guitar handy: Pick a chord progression of two chords that you know best, but give an equal and long amount of time for each chord. Change the chords starting at beat four, beat three, and even beat two but no matter what always be at the new chord at beat one of the new measure. This is the aural equivalent of an optical illusion! Even though a person is taking forever to change a chord, as long as the switch is complete by beat one of the next measure the listener won't notice!

The Ghost Chord is an awesome trick that works really really well even for someone who has never picked up a guitar before. Guitar is such a lovely instrument to pick up. So easy to play, and still it brings surprises (even after 18 years of playing).