i Love Guitar

How about some super sweet sounding chord voicings? Some of these you may recognize, while others may be new.

As we build chord preferences [a catalog of those we like to use], one of the main questions is “Does this meet my standard for a great sounding chord?”. There is a threshold that chords need to meet, to get added to our preferred chords. This threshold involves the degree of difficulty in fingering, how it resonates, & where it may fit [where it is 'appropriate'].

Here, I provide some my favorite chords; some were taught to me, some I discovered. This is by no means [because this is endless] an exhaustive list, but it can show you chords that set a threshold, & thus provide a way to start searching for similar types of fingerings & sounds [ones with beautiful resonance].

Take in the tab, play these chords, start searching for others, name them if necessary, & add them to progressions [find out where they work]. Hopefully you’ll be adding them to songs you write.

We’ll be updating this page, adding more cool chords. Our first installment is some E Major type chords.

An interesting thing happens when chords move up the fretboard. The Root moves to the 3rd of the chord, the 3rd moves to the 5th, & the 5th moves to the Root. They go in a cycle.

We can play melodic arpeggios up a single string. When we do this, we can see the fret spacing of the type of chord we are playing. In this lesson, we are playing Major chords, which are built as a 4-3, where the 4 is a Major 3rd [4 half steps = 4 frets] & the 3 is a minor 3rd [3 half steps = 3 frets]. The 3rd is 4 frets away from the root, the 5th is 3 frets away from the 3rd, & the root is 5 half steps away from the root [it's a Perfect 4th back to the root].

We can also stack the Root, 3rd, & 5th on 3 adjacent strings. When we do this, the chord is either in Root Position [the root is on the lowest string], 1st inversion [the 3rd is on the lowest string], or 2nd inversion [the 5th is on the lowest string].

What follows is the C Major Triad on 3-string sets. As we look for the next way to play the same set of 3 tones, the root moves to the 3rd, the 3rd to the 5th, the 5th to the root. Brilliant!

A change in color [black/white] is a new chord.

Play through each string set, & realize the chord components along the way. We’ve broken C down into chunks. All of these chunks are C Major triads. They are all fragments of the CAGED cycle as well [forms are skipped].

A Root position chord means that the root of the chord is in the lowest voice [the bass]. In the following chord voicings, the 6th string is the lowest voice. A 1st inversion chord has the 3rd in the bass. A 2nd inversion chord has the 5th in the bass. A 3rd inversion chord has the 7th in the bass.

The R stands for root. The numbers are the other chord components: 3 = 3rd, 5 = 5th, 7 = 7th. The change in colors – black-white-black-white-black – means these are separate chords to be fingered. The inactive strings are muted. The 7 with a strikethrough on the left is one possible chord symbol for a Major 7 type chord.

A Major 7 chord is a Major triad with a Major 7 added. It’s numerical chromatic scheme is 0-4-7-11. In common theory, this means R-3-5-7.

What is fascinating to see is that as chords invert on the same set of strings, up the fretboard, there is a cycle. The cycle is R moves to 3, 3 moves to 5, 5 moves to 7, 7 moves to the R.

Check that this is the case on all of the strings. Triads also work this way.

The grid is for GMaj7 (another way to write a Major 7 type chord), but the shapes apply to all 12 tones.