Stradella Alternate Chords

Stradella Bass

Major 7th Chords

7th Chords

Minor 7th Chords

Sixth Chords

Ninth Chords

Augmented 5th Chords

Diminished Chords

Suspended Chords

One big problem with accordion, especially when playing jazz and Latin, is that the chord buttons of left hand side are rather limiting. For one thing, the chord types are limited to major, minor, seventh and diminished. And, further, each chord has only three sounding notes (seventh and diminished drop the fifth).

There really aren't problems in this world, just opportunities for solutions! The limited chord set of the Stradella bass gives the player the choice to add the missing notes with the creative use of the single bass buttons, adding treble notes, and even the pressing of multiple chord buttons at the same time. Really, it's just a matter of how flexible (and big) your hands are.

To help in figuring out some of the choices (opportunities!), I've written a short program which figures out what chords you might want to use in place of the esoteric symbol on a lead sheet.

For example, you might see that you need a “Cm7b9” (this is a C minor chord with an added 7th and a flat 9th). Well, it's not a note on the Stradella note set. However, with this utility you can discover that you can “fake” the chord with a number of choices. The program starts off by reporting what the notes are in the chord:

• Chord 'Cm7b9' notes are: C Db Bb Eb G

and then the alternates:

• Button C-m has: C Eb G; missing Db Bb
• Button Bb-d has: Db Bb G; missing C Eb
• Button Eb-M has: Bb Eb G; missing C Db
• Button Eb-7 has: Db Eb G; missing C Bb

And if it's choice you are after, remember that the program only shows buttons as a natural (C, D, G, etc) or flat (Eb, Gb, etc). You also have all the sharp alternatives (as the saying goes, this is an exercise for the reader).

The program has over 150 different built in chords, so you should be good to go with even more bizarre charts.