Chord Patterns on the Charango

[en Español]

The DG Charango Chord Patterns Android application facilitates the learning of chord patterns on the Charango, by displaying all the notes and intervals in a chord, on any position along the fretboard.

To produce notes of a chord, you must play only notes from the chord.

For example, say you want to produce notes for the A major chord.

The A major chord is based on the following notes: A, C#, E.

Suppose you want to play this chord starting from the 1st fret of the instrument, and onwards.

• 1st string course is E, part of the chord; also is A, on the 5th fret;
• 2nd string course is A, part the chord; also is C#, on the 4th fret;
• 3rd string course is E, part of the chord; also is A, on the 5th fret;
• 4th string course is C, not on the chord, but C# on the 1st fret is; also is E, on the 4th fret;
• 5th string course is G, not on the chord, but A on the 2nd fret is.

The following image shows this chord pattern from the 1st fret onwards:

Next, you need to know the intervals, to be able to tell which is the root, and its relationship to the other notes in the chord.

By tapping on the fretboard of the DG Charango Chord Patterns Android application, it reveals the note intervals, as shown below:

This way you know the root (R) appears in 4 places, the third (M3) appears in 2 places, and the perfect fifth (p5) in 3 places.

So there are several potential ways you can play this chord.

Next, you have to decide how to combine the dots such that you form a chord with the R, M3, p5, intervals.

Because there are five string courses, there is scope for some redundancy (repeated notes).

Here are some possibilities (we leave some others for the reader to discover, in other frets):

As you can see, from one pattern for 5 frets, we have deduced here 4 ways of doing the A major chord.

The first chord deduced is probably the simplest one, with only two fingers on the fretboard, and 3 open strings. Gradually, they can become more elaborate.

Notice, too, that the different chords end up duplicating different intervals in the chord formula, bringing up richer harmonies, so that's why they sound a bit different from each other.

Which one you choose, depends on the proximity to the melody you are playing, on the sound, on the proximity to the previous and the next chords, and on how comfortable your fingers feel on those positions.

And remember that you can explore more by using the ">>" arrow, to display intervals in higher (5-12) frets.

As you have seen, by understanding the intervals behind the chord formulas, this application will help you build many chords on your Charango.

A key point to remember: this application does not teach you how to do chords by memory, it teaches you how to deduce them.