Hey Friend,

I first learned about this Mexican holiday when I was stationed in California back in the Eighties. I only heard about it because we would go to a Mexican restaurant called El Toritos on Thursdays for happy hour margaritas ($.75!!!) and soft tacos.

I learned something interesting about Cinco de Mayo yesterday - it's not a celebration of Mexican Independence, which seems to be the general understanding. It's actually commemorating a particular battle where the Mexican Army was seriously outnumbered by the French but managed to kick their butts. Winning!

I put together some exercises so you can hear the difference between major, minor and diminished chords.While you're not going to have many instances where you need to play diminished chords, they do serve a purpose. They can create some really good tension in the flow of a song when used in certain contexts. 

What I want you to pay attention to is listening for the individual notes in each chord as it changes from major or minor to diminished. You will hear the difference as that fifth note drops down a half step (one fret).

Also, listen to the MP3 called C Major Progression. Listen to how the chords "step up" in pitch. More than that, try to feel the tension created by the minor to diminished change, and finally the relief from the diminished to major chord change. 

If you think about it for just a second, you'll realize the power that is in that tension. As emotional beings, our natural motivation is to avoid pain and seek pleasure or comfort. Using various notes from a scale or specific chords in a progression is extremely effective in taking a listener down that path.

Consider that with music, we can accomplish a lot of emotional movement in a matter of minutes. That's some potent mojo!

I was excited when I remembered one particular song from the Eighties that did just that - created an interesting riff around the tension created by that minor flatted - fifth in the diminished chord. The song is "It's Not Love" by Dokken, and the intro riff demonstrates the effective use of that diminished interval to really cool effect.

I've also included a link to some tabs for the song so you can see and hear the effect. Maybe even try it out a bit...  The guitars are tuned to Eb standard, so don't let that throw you. You can just play it in standard tuning if you want to give it a shot.  Dokken - "It's Not Love"

What's even cooler in my opinion is the fact that this intro riff is created using power chords (you saw that coming, didn't you!). The four chords you hear are A5, A5dim, C5 and C5dim. Well, not exactly diminished because you don't have the minor third note in the chord (so you don't get the full, ugly effect), but it works for the song. 

This is the kind of stuff you can do when you know where the power chords sit on the guitar neck. Easy Power Chords shows you over 250 chord possibilities all over the neck. Here's the link.

Tomorrow we'll lay out the note progressions of each chord as they climb up the scale and create that cohesive movement.

Peace~

Dave