Harrison was genius. Being the youngest Beatle he bloomed slower than Paul and John but beautifully. His work often featured interesting chords and used dissonance.
GH used augmented or diminished chords which gave his playing a unique sound. In my experience it's a difficult style to pull of.
http://www.last.fm/user/dratironmusic/journal/2007/01/08/b69xd_george_harrison's_signature_sound
Naughty Chords
George refered to them many times in interviews throughout his life but few fans, outside of musicians, really knew what he was talking about. What is this "naughty chord" and what is it that makes it so naughty? The naughty chords George refers to are typicaly dominant diminished chords and augmented chords. All you readers without degrees in music theory, don't run so fast, I'll explain.
In music, basic chords are made of three notes (a triad) and can be major or minor. Without getting into the details of how to construct each chord, I'll show you examples. A Cmajor chord is built on the note C-E-G. The distance from C to E is a major third (hence a major chord). A Cminor chord is built on the notes C-Eb(b=flat)-G. The distance from C to Eb is a minor third. These are very basic chord structures and are found all over music.
The naughtyness begins when we start messing around with notes in these chords. Let's take that Cminor chord and lower the fifth (G) a half-step. Now we have C-Eb-Gb this is a diminished triad. If we were to take the major chord and raise the fifth (G) to G# then we'd have an augmented chord. But it doesn't stop there. If you want to get real kinky, you through another note on the diminished chord. Add a 7 (B, in our example) and lower it a half step.
Now you have C-Eb-Gb-Bb which is often refered to as a Dominant Diminished chord. This chord, with all those flats, leads us to many different chords that a regular C minor would not lead us too. It is with using these naughty chords that Harrison is able to jump from key to key with an amazing amount of ease.
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This is a very touching concert. Eric Clapton runs the show along with Jeff Lynne from ELO. Dhani Harrison also makes an appearance. We have enough musicians here at ROD that we could have had a memorial concert for Thordaddy as well.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Dr1anRP9w
