October 2nd.

And I should have thought this out better.

I started with Moonshadow – just because it was in my head – and realized pretty quickly I was winging it without a plan. That’s kind of how this week went. Cat Stevens on the brain, a fascinating chord voicing question from the Forum, and a mystery song that grabbed me this week and prevented me from doing much else.

We’ll get to all of it.

CAT STEVENS PACK HERE

Cat Stevens – What’s In That Pack

A couple of my guitar players this week were asking about Cat Stevens songs, which sent me back to look at what we actually have. With 2,000 lessons now I’ve genuinely lost track of what’s in there.

The Cat Stevens pack is full of really beautiful tunes. I played through fragments of Moonshadow, The Wind, and Peace Train – that last one being a great example of playing sixths up and down the neck, mostly on the second and fourth strings in spots, switching to first and third in others.

Some of his songs have chord progressions and key changes that are deceptively tricky. The Wind changes keys at a moment I wasn’t quite ready for this week. Moonshadow needs the melody an octave higher than where I started.

That’s what happens when you fly by the seat of your pants.

The point is – his songs reward the time you put into them. There’s something in Cat Stevens’ music that feels inevitable once you get it under your fingers. Worth checking out the pack if you haven’t.

CAT STEVENS PACK HERE

Major 7 Chords – A Forum Question Worth Answering Properly

Someone on the Forum posted about an America song called Amber Cascades – a tune I wasn’t familiar with – and had correctly identified the opening chords as A major 7 and D major 7.

That sent me down a rabbit hole about major 7 chord voicings that I think is genuinely worth sharing.

Here’s the thing about major 7 chords – the voicing matters enormously. The same chord can sound completely different depending on which note is on top.

The D Family Voicing:

When you play A major 7 out of the D family – three notes on the top strings with an A bass note – the major 7th sits in the middle of the chord on the third string. The root is in the bass, the fifth is on top. It creates a warm, pleasant sound.

D major 7 from the E family – three notes all at the second fret with D in the bass – works the same way. The C sharp sits in the middle rather than a C (which would make it D7) or a D (which would make it straight D major).

The E Family voicing:

Now take that same A major 7 and build it out of the E family instead. Barre the fifth fret, take just the top three strings, add the open A bass note. Change that high A at the fifth fret to G sharp and you have a major 7 chord with the seventh on TOP rather than in the middle.

That’s a distinctly different sound.

You’ve heard it in Color My World – F major 7 with the E on top. That seventh-on-top voicing has a particular quality – more open, more searching, more colorful.

Why the D family is especially useful:

The D family voicing becomes particularly powerful for major 7 chords when the root is A or E – because then you can use an open bass note. The full chord shape goes up the neck while the bass note stays open, creating that resonant quality America uses so naturally in their songs.

For Amber Cascades specifically:

A major 7 out of the D family at the ninth fret with the open A bass.

D major 7 out of the E family at the ninth, tenth, and eleventh frets on the first three strings with D in the bass.

Play them with that Ventura Highway strum and notice something – the top note stays the same across both chords. C sharp on the A. C sharp on the D. That’s what creates that smooth, hovering quality America is known for.

Hopefully a third of that registered. The takeaway: the E and A families aren’t the only movable chord families worth knowing. The D family is particularly useful for major 7 chords, especially when you can put an open A or E in the bass.

GUITAR GEOGRAPHY LESSON PACK HERE

Eric Satie – An Unexpected Detour

Somewhere in the middle of working through those major 7 voicings, I ended up playing the A major 7 and E major 7 combination in a way that led me straight into Eric Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1.

Those three gymnopédies all use these beautiful major 7 chord voicings with unusual melodies that get genuinely strange in spots.

Just one of those moments where music theory and music history collide unexpectedly.

The Mystery Song

I’m not going to tell you what it is yet.

It grabbed me this week and I haven’t been able to put it down. Very moody. A song I’ve known since the mid-1980s that somehow stayed off my radar until a guitar player asked about it a while back.

Big mistake letting it wait that long.

It’s still very much a work in progress. But I played a bit of it at the end of this week’s update and I think you’ll feel what I felt when it first caught me.

More on that soon.

See you next week.

— Neil