Power chords

Feature requests
1

Is there a way to enter a chord as a power chord (1-5)? I am a fiddler and so I play a lot of power chords, especially the chords G5, D5, and A5. I can’t figure out how to get a chord to drop the third. Can I do this?

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2

Good question for my modal tunes.

3

I’ll repeat what I said in the other thread here, in case anyone finds this later.

Power chords / no-third chords / root-fifth chords are not available yet, but they will be in the future. My current thinking is to offer two things:

  1. A new chord type (5) that has only a root and fifth, which you can choose while creating/editing a song.
  2. A way to say “play this song with third-less chords” (or at least certain chords without a third) so that you can get that “modal” sound without having to manually go in and change every chord in the editor.

Lots of new improvements coming to the instrument playback in the next few months, and the plan is for this to be a part of that.

Also, G, A, Bb, and B tunes are played with a G5 voicing for the 1 chord by default, so they work OK for modal tunes as-is.

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4

I’d rather have control on when to have a power chord. That’s because in some songs, I’ll use a D7, a Dmaj and a D5, depending on what’s going on. Sometimes I find my StrumMachine tracks sound funny when I’m play because I can’t get a power chord where I expect it to be. When I’m playing a D5 on my banjo and StrumMaching plays a Dmaj it just sounds funny and discordant to me.

In addition, another thing about chords, in particular the D7. On the banjo, 99 times out of 100 a D7 will not actually be a true D7 (D A C F#). Instead we usually just play a simplified version (D A C D). I believe this is technically a D7sus. When I’m playing the typical banjo D7 chord and StrumMachine plays its full guitar D7 with the F#, it doesn’t sound right. It’s jarring and discordant to what I’m playing. If you’re going to implement power chords, could you also offer a way for banjo players to use the partial D7 that we normally use for backup as an option somehow? You could call it a partial D7, D7sus or banjo D7 or whatever.

5

The banjo D7 described doesn’t have a 3rd of any kind so it’s neither major or minor. To be a sus chord the 3rd would be replaced with a 2nd or a 4th but they’re not in the chord. So if banjo is being played with a live guitar player is the expectation the guitar player won’t include a 3rd in their chord? As a guitar player I can’t recall being asked to do that but I also can’t recall playing with just a banjo.