7 Chords Guitar

[Marion Georgi]

Someyears ago I made a concerted effort to bring up this weaker area of my playing. I have since put a lot of time and effort into building my knowledge of guitar chords and understanding guitar chord theory.

And thankfully, doing so has had a profound effect on my guitar playing. I now feel much more comfortable and confident playing a range of guitar chords all over the fretboard. But one additional and significant benefit, is that my lead guitar playing has also improved.

It will help you to create more sophisticated solos. It will also allow you to play alongside the track you are accompanying, rather than on top of it. And this will make your solos sound more melodic and effective.

Finally, if you have any ambitions for writing your own music, I would strongly recommend learning the basics of guitar chord theory. It will help you to construct interesting and impactful chord progressions that will represent the type of music you are trying to create.

As such, here I will be covering the basics. This will give you the fundamentals of guitar chord theory you need to become more comfortable with chords and how they are constructed. Over time you can build on this to take your guitar chord theory knowledge to the next level.

As such, the information outlined here is largely theoretical, rather than practical. Yet once you understand this information, it will make learning different chords and using them in your playing much easier.

So whether you are looking to improve your rhythm guitar skills, write your own music, or develop as a musician more generally, I hope you find the information included here useful. Here are the basics of guitar chord theory:

If we take the example above, you can see that C is the first note of the scale, and D is the second. As a result, E is then the third note that you encounter. Similarly, when you are trying to find the next note a third up from E, you count in the same way.

If you find the above confusing, then you can also think about skipping out or jumping over alternative notes in the scale. In other words, you play the note of C, miss D, play E, miss F, play G, and so on.

And this is because of intervals. As noted above, a triad is formed by taking 3 notes, all of which are a third apart. Yet this triad can sound totally different, depending on the intervals between the notes.

As you can see, there are 2 frets separating many of the notes in the scale, and only 1 fret separating others. This is very important when you begin to create triads from different notes of the scale.

For even though the notes in any given triad might be a third apart, the actual intervals between the notes change, depending on the note on which you start. We can see this by comparing a triad starting on the note of C, with one starting on the note of D:

In this first diagram the starting note (or root note) of the triad is C, shown above in the light blue colour. As you can see, there are 4 frets separating the notes of C and E. There are 3 frets separating the notes of E and G. And between the notes of C and G, there are 7 frets.

Between D and F, there are only 3 frets (or 1 and a half tones). Conversely, between the notes of F and A, there are 4 frets (or 2 tones). And so just like the triad built on C, the distance between D (the root note) and the A is 7 frets, or 3 and a half tones.

And when you do so, you will hopefully be able to hear the differences in the way they sound. The major triad will have an upbeat and happy sound. Conversely, the minor triad will have a more sad and melancholic sound.

The different sounds between these two triads results from the different intervals between the notes which appear in the triads. This is an important concept when it comes to guitar chord theory and one which is covered in more depth below.

As noted above, when you form a triad starting on the note of C (in the key of C major), you form a C major triad. When you do the same but you start on the note of D, you form a D minor triad.

The first note in the chord is always referred to as the root note. And it is this note which determines the name of the chord. So the root note for a C chord is C. The root note for the chord of D is D, and so on.

The perfect fifth is always 7 frets, or 3 and a half tones higher than the root note. Perfect intervals are associated with musical consonance and resolution. The presence of this perfect interval gives the chord a stable and harmonious sound. The chord is devoid of dissonance or tension.

However, like the major triad shown above, this minor triad also contains a perfect fifth. So although it does have a more downbeat sound, like the major triad, it also sounds stable and resolved. It does not have a dissonant or tense sound.

The next step to better understanding guitar chord theory is to apply this idea to all of the notes in the major scale. This will help you to appreciate the relationship between the notes in the scale and how they stack together to form different triads.

The only change you need to make, is to go back to the notes at the beginning of the scale to create the triads, once you reach the 7th note of the scale. In the case of F for example, the notes in the triad are F, A and C. In the case of G they are G, B and D.

If you do go through this process, then hopefully you will discover two things. The first of these is that when you harmonise the major scale, you end up producing a combination of both major and minor triads.

The above diagram simply shows the 3 notes that are present in the triad. And given that the formation of this triad is no different to any of the others in the scale, you might be wondering why it is diminished, rather than simply major or minor.

The root and minor third are exactly the same as the other triads listed above. There are 3 frets between the root note of the triad and the minor third. The key difference is that this diminished triad does not have a perfect fifth. There are not 7 frets between the B (root note) and the F. There are in fact just 6 frets.

At this stage, you might understandably be wondering how you can use this information practically. For whilst it is useful to understand what triads are and how they are formed, there is some more information we need to cover before we can use them in a practical context.

Up to this point, I have spoken about triads in their purest terms. When discussing guitar chord theory, this makes sense. But it can make it difficult to link some of these ideas and apply them to your fretboard.

To help you better understand what a triad is, and also how it functions in a practical context, I think it is important to first clearly define what a triad is in relation to a chord. We can then look at how to use it in a practical context.

As mentioned above, a triad is a chord made of 3 notes. And each note within the triad is a third apart. In short, this means that a triad is type of chord. All triads are chords. But not all chords are triads.

When you play a G major chord however, you play all 6 strings. As you can see from the diagram above though, the only notes that you play are those in the triad. You play the open G and B strings, and then the note of G on the high E string.

Appreciating that the triads discussed up to this point contain the same notes as simple major and minor chords is useful. It connects the material here with chords that you have most likely been using since you first started playing guitar.

This table shows the order of triads which are created when you harmonise the major scale. Here though I have added in an extra row which assigns a number to each of the triads. In just the same way that scale degrees are numbered, so are the triads that are formed when the scale degrees are harmonised.

And so although understanding which chords are formed when you harmonise the major scale is a significant step towards understanding guitar chord theory, there are some further pieces of theory to cover if you want to work out how different songs are created.

These are in depth and as such are beyond the scope of this article. I will however cover them in more detail in future articles. For now though, it is just important to recognise that chord progressions are not always as clear cut as I have presented them in the tables above.

These chords appear everywhere in popular music. And so you are very likely to have encountered them in the form of major and minor 7 chords, as well as dominant 7th chords. As is true of chord progressions, this is a lengthy topic that requires further depth and explanation.

I absolutely appreciate your lessons here on this site. I have been playing guitar and bass at a pro level for 50 years. I had a vague grasp of these fundamentals, but after reading thru some of your plans here, it has become clear to me now what I have been doing all these years. Starting at age 10, early on I grasped the scales and chord patterns but never knew the science or math behind the theory. Thank you very much.

Bar (or barre) chords often present a huge difficulty to beginner guitarists. Almost every student I have struggles to some extent when they are first learning to use bar chords in the songs they play. Even though it can be tough to get a grip on these types of chords, they are incredibly important to be able to do. I would guess that upwards of 50% of the songs out there require barring in some way or another.

Success on bar chords takes much more than simply learning where the fingers should go. Getting optimal curvature of the fingers, placement of the thumb, and knowing the subtleties of positioning the finger that is doing the bar can make all the difference.

Notice how my thumb is opposite my 2nd (middle) finger on the other side of the neck. Having your thumb too far to the left or right will cause strain and tension in the rest of your hand, thus making it more of a struggle to fret the chord.

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