Easy To Play, Advanced Sounding Chords For Your Acoustic Guitar

Many guitar players excel in soloing yet suck at playing rhythm guitar, never really venturing beyond your everyday open and bar chords. Considering that most the time you play guitar, you are playing rhythm guitar, this will cause all sorts of problems and limitations. To balance things up a little between your soloing and rhythm guitar skills, I am going to show you some really cool chords that totally changed the way I played guitar when I first learned them. These chords sound advanced, are easy to play, can be used in both a solo and rhythm context, and it’s easy to play the three main chord types with them; major, minor, and dominant. Now if that doesn’t entice to you, I don’t know what will. Check the video below to see these chords in action along with detailed explanations: Advanced Guitar Chords Youtube Video I like to call these chords “block chords” or 4, 3, 2, 1 voicing’s because of the strings of the guitar they fall on. Whatever you want to call them, they will transform the way you play rhythm guitar, allowing you to create all sorts of awesome sounding music. Better yet, there is no need to understand the theory behind these chords to use them in your playing. This is better kept for another article anyway, as today I want to totally focus on the visualisation of these chords on the fretboard so that you can easily use them in your own guitar playing. Avoid What I Did. Start Working On Your Chords Now! Yes, for too long I ignored my chord playing on guitar, focusing more or less on my solo skills only. I had my open and bar chords down, but beyond that I was pretty clueless. Sure, there were different chords I would come across in songs and pieces I’d play, but outside of the context in which I found them, I had no idea how to use them in my own guitar playing. The result was a great in-balance between my solo and rhythm guitar skills. It wasn’t until 1998 when I started studying Jazz, some 8 years after I first started playing guitar, that I came across block chords. These were a total game changer for my playing, opening up the entire fretboard with a series of chord shapes I could use in so many different ways. While I learned block chords in a jazz context, they certainly aren’t exclusive to this style. Block chords can be used in many varying styles of music and are great for your acoustic guitar playing. The Key To Visualising Block Chords It was around the time I was finally starting to work on my chords that I bought one of those chord encyclopaedias. You know, the big thick books with thousands of chords in them. My intention was to go through it page by page getting as many of the chords down as I could. Let me tell you, this is NOT the way to learn chords on your guitar. Encyclopaedias are never meant for reading front to back, they are a reference book, and the chord encyclopaedias are no different. The key to learning any chord on your guitar, so that you can understand it and use it with absolute freedom in your playing, is to see how it relates to the other chords you know on the fretboard. As your chord vocabulary and knowledge increases, there will be other key relationships you can tap into as well. Let’s begin with our first block chord, a major 7th root position shape: Major 7th Block Root Position Advanced Guitar Chord To convert the chord above into a dominant 7th shape, you need to change just one note, as there is only one note difference between a major 7th and dominant 7th chord. Here is our dominant 7th block chord in root position: Dominant 7th Root Position Advanced Guitar Chord All we did was move the note on the second string of the major 7th chord down one fret. Remember that our focus is all about the visualisation and application of block chords in todays article, not the theory behind them. No need to worry if you don’t understand the make up of a major 7th or dominant chord for now. It won’t stop you from creating great music with them. From our dominant 7th block chord form we can create a minor 7th by again changing just one note. This time we are going to shift the note on the first string of the dominant 7th shape down one fret: Minor 7th Root Position Advanced Guitar Chord This is what I am referring to when I am talking about relating one chord shape to another. It will ensure you have your chord forms visualised on the fretboard so that you can easily find them when in the act of playing, where there is often little time to think. More Block Chord Shapes The shapes above are in root position, however we can also play the inversions of these shapes to really open up the fretboard and maximise the use of these chords in your playing. Remember, don’t get caught up in the theory of these chords. If you don’t know what chord inversions are, not to worry, you don’t need to know right now. Just focus on how to visualise and apply these chords to your guitar playing. Below are the four major 7th block chord forms, root position through to 3rd inversion, that will cover the entire fretboard: Major 7th Advanced Guitar Chord Fretboard Diagram In the diagram above we have each of the four major 7th block chord forms you get when including the inversions. As you can see, they run right up the neck of the guitar. I have highlighted the root note in each shape, as identifying the root note, and where it sits in relation to the shape, will help you find the particular block chord you are after. As I demonstrated earlier, changing just one note will convert all these shapes into dominant 7th chords, and in turn, changing one note of the dominant 7th shapes will convert them into minor 7th chords: Advanced Guitar Chord Shapes Practice the shapes above in the following two ways: 1. Working through them vertically, one column at a time. This highlights the similarities between each chord type. 2. Working through them horizontally, one a row at a time. This gets you playing each chord type up and down the neck, opening up the entire fretboard to you. Creating Awesome Music Using Block Chords Having a lot of chord shapes under your fingers on the guitar, but not knowing how to use them musically is a big waste! Thankfully this won’t be the case with your block chords, as I am now going to give you an example of applying them musically. There is so much you can do with these chords. Think about it. You have four different positions you can play the three main chord types in music of major, minor, and dominant. Let’s use a II V I progression to apply our block chords. This is a good example because a II V I progression uses major, minor and dominant chords. The roman numerals refer to the chords we are pulling out of the key, the II, the V, and the I chords. Don't understand this? Not to worry as we don’t need to. Just focus on the application. The following is a II V I chord progression in the key of G major: II V I progression in G Major Let’s apply some of our block chord forms to this progression: Advanced Guitar Chord Example The progression above repeats four times. Each time I am purposely sticking to the one area of the fretboard to illustrate to you just how much these shapes have in common with each other. In many cases there are notes shared between them, and knowing four positions for each chord means there is always one nearby. The third and fourth times I play through this progression, I am changing between block chord shapes over the static chord. For example, when the Am7 is happening, I am shifting between two different block chord shapes, as I am with the D7, and four shifts between block chords occurs over the GMaj7 chord. This creates great movement within our II V I progression, and is a tiny glimpse into the possibilities block chords provide for your acoustic guitar playing. rnLearn 3 ways to use jazz guitar chord shapes to create awesome sounding music.