GUITAR CHORDS - An Introduction to the Theory

chord theory for guitarists who don't play the keyboard can be a little bit tricky there's only six strings here and obviously you've got a massive array of notes on the piano so it's easier for a keyboard player to construct chords they're also on guitar for example more than one way to play the exactly the same chord so you might have something like this [Music] exactly the same but obviously the tone gets darker as you go up the neck so that may be your preference for playing in a particular place but that chord can also be called quite a few different things [Music] e half diminished or e minor seven flat and fifth or it could be a c9 chord or it could be g minor six how's all this work let's have a look [Music] in this example i'm going to work in the key of c so right at the bottom of your screen you can see all the degrees of the scale and the notes they are and that will stay throughout this video just so that you can sort of just latch on to that when i'm talking through the various extensions now on guitar as i said before you could have a chord in three different ways the tone becoming darker as you go further up the neck which is standard you've got thicker strings here and they're shorter as well so you get less top end so you may want to play whichever one suits you for that particular style or pickup setting or whatever it is now let's start with a key of c this is a c chord now i've just strummed five strings i've left the low e out here because actually i want the root note at the bottom [Music] that's a little bit sort of two bottom heavy and actually it's the wrong note if you're playing the bass as well as your chord so at the c is my base note i've got another c here first fret on the second string then i've got two e's i've got a second fret on the d string and then an e so i've got two two e's and then the g just that open string there so i've only got three different notes so do you need to play both c's well you don't or those two halves they give you the full c chord but of course it sounds a bit quieter a bit weaker perhaps if you're just doing this [Music] but you could [Music] you could create something like that so you've got a different sort of rhythmic backdrop and you're using two halves of that c chord to create something else now if i've got my c chord here and i release my first finger i get a c major seven chord you think that's quite bizarre you've taken fingers away to create a more complicated chord whereas on piano you'd have to add an extra note on piano the diagram is slightly easier to fathom because literally looking at a list of notes whereas of course on guitar it crosses the neck so it's a bit more tricky so this time with the c major seven chord we've got a b in there and that open string is a b string i've taken one of the c's away and made it into a b instead so i've now have four different notes i've got c and e which is repeated on the open e a g and a b so there's four different notes there across five strings [Music] if i have put my c chord down again and add my last finger third fret on the g string [Music] get a c7 chord okay so c7 is where the seventh is actually flattened so it becomes a b flat [Music] now when you are faced with something like c9 which was the first chord that i played c9 is a c7 but with the ninth added it's different from c and nine c add nine is this [Music] where you actually add the ninth of the scale which is the same as the second c d e f g a b c d so it's an added d so i've got a c chord but with a d added [Music] so this time i've taken the c and actually moved it to a d but i've still got a c because of my bass note [Music] however if you've got a bass player you don't need to play the c at all this is where it gets a bit more complicated but actually a bit more useful because we've only got really a maximum of six strings and because these two strings are the same it means you're likely to get repeats if you're doing barring for example so actually you've only got five strings in some cases so if we take the chord of c9 [Music] as i said before c9 means that the seventh has to be added [Music] now because i've got the c here i can take that away leaving that for the bass player that sort of thing now when you have more extensions let's say we've got c7 sharp 11. [Music] so the 11th of c is an f so if we were to sharpen that we get an f sharp now in terms of my c9 chord the closest the sharp 11s is actually this one here so you've got to find which note is that f sharp which one is closest to your chord symbol and then try and integrate that so what you could do is this you could bar across [Music] second fret on the four strings and then put two fingers in the middle to restore your seventh and your ninth there's your c7 sharp 11. if you can do this so that you put your reinstate the c just to hear those chords hear that chord with all its notes with respect to the root it does help because then you can sort of count up one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven sharp 11 like that so it does help if you can do it but it becomes a bit of a fistful of nonsense really hard of course if you're dragging and trying to stretch the chances are you'll change the tuning slightly of the guitar so you can dispense with the root now in c9 we had the g here which is actually the fifth of your chord you can take the fifth away as well it's really important you can dispense with the root and the fifth in any chord because actually the sort of the proper nuts and bolts of the chord the x expressive bits the the sort of flavoring is what you want to come across so for example here with this chord we've got the third the seventh the ninth and the sharp eleven there's no mention of the root or the fifth anywhere there because the bass player [Music] is doing root and fifth [Music] oh yeah so there we are that's kind of an explanation of that now if we have uh i don't know more complicated chord for example c13 the 13th in c [Music] is an a [Music] now that means that i've got my c9 chord [Music] and my thirteenth the ninth in a c13 chord is actually optional if you see c13 written the seventh has to be there but then you can stick any old smattering of stuff in between as well if you like this is easier if you're on keyboard but i could reinstate the third i could actually double my third i could have this [Music] they're both c13 they're both completely valid but you can make something out of those [Music] so i've got i've got a little counter line going with my cause as well now that 13th note the a it becomes the sixth if the seventh is is now gone so if you see c6 i've got a major chord there c major [Music] with my sixth c13 c6 so whenever you see numbers that are 9 11 and 13 it means you have to add the seventh and you could actually think of this as simple arithmetic um sort of addition you've got the sixth becomes the thirteenth if you add your seven six plus seven thirteen and so on so for your nine for example is the second of your scale but you add seven to get your nine and that's how that works now the trouble is with any guitar chords especially if your sight reading a big band chart you might get a bar of c7 for example but it's actually grouped into four beats it goes c7 c9 c13 c7 sharp 11. really that's just a bit a bit mad and actually what's invariably happening in there is that the top line the vocal line or the blast line is actually reflecting the harmony in the guitar parts as well but if you are reading a big band chart and it says c7 just play c7 for the whole bar because the the line that's creating all of those extensions will be in another part somewhere so when you are guitarist and you're looking through thinking oh really the chances are you can actually sort of do a bit of a shorthand version [Music] now the trouble with the sharp 11 is that it is right next to the fifth so if you do play a standard c7 chord [Music] and you've got a vocal line that is playing the f sharp you're going to get a clash so the sharp 11 is actually the one to be careful of there flat 13 is an a flat and it's also next to the fifth so [Music] so that flat 13 is another one to be a little bit careful of this where the flat 13 and the sharp 11 are actually one half step either side of your fifth now you could as i said before take the fifth away which resolves that problem c7 has just two notes e and b flat now because you've got sharp 11 and 13 that means you can add your 9 as well which means that you can have just e b flat and d you've have no root there and you have no fifth there which means that your sharp 11 and your 13 are not going to get in the way [Music] and there you are whereas if you've got this [Music] player g sing an f sharp you're gonna get problems now of course you've got only really four strings in practice because these two strings are kind of low for your chords but you can have your c9 if i put my c9 here i could flatten my last finger and actually get the root at the top like this if i play it here i can get another third at the top but as you can see it's a little bit of a handful [Music] but it becomes a bit of a handful as those frets get closer together anyway so while this is not certainly not an exhaustive uh or rather this isn't a full description of all the chords you can play on guitar i hope that this is basically a method where you can sort of pick and choose and decide how you want to approach something

Channel: Dan Baker

Views: 320

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Guitar chords, Guitar chord theory, Dan baker musician, Fender telecaster

Id: LBRCf0Wf-P4

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021