How do you figure out chords on the guitar?
It's not magic. Just knowledge. - Part 3 of 3
There is so much to know when learning how to figure out chords on your guitar. It’s already difficult enough trying to memorize all of the shapes in your chord vocabulary, let alone having figure out how to build chords you don’t know.
Memorizing seemingly endless shapes and names of chords can get a bit overwhelming after a while. There must be a better way to remember all of the chords used to play the guitar. Honestly, most guitarists stick with what works for them. They create mental lists of chords they know and need for the songs they play on a regular basis, rarely ever wandering outside that comfort zone. After a while, chords become a sort of “need to know” priority.
Learning the mathematics, patterns, theory and applications of strange or exotic jazz chords and extended chords, can feel like an exercise in futility. Maybe that’s one of the reasons most guitarists steer clear of learning jazz guitar. Long, weird names with strange symbols and numbers on those kinds of chords can deter the most seasoned players.
Honestly, you really don’t need to know jazz chords unless you plan to explore that genre. What you do need to know is how to understand why the chords you already know, are called what they are called. Knowledge is power!
In the diagram below, I used Microsoft Excel to simulate a guitar fretboard with all of the notes from the open strings to the twelfth fret. I used colors for each note, to make it a little more interesting.
If you notice, every one of the twelve notes in music exists at least one or two times on each string.
Look for the shape of the common beginner “C” chord. Do you see it? The “C” is yellow, the “E” is blue, and the “G” is green. Now, take a look at the entire fretboard, and you will see “C”, “E” and “G” in a lot of places throughout the fretboard. That means the basic beginner “C” chord you know is not the only “C” chord on the fretboard. In fact, there are a few shapes that can make up the “C” chord as you can see in the diagram below.
All of the “C’s” are root notes for the chord. All of the “E’s” are the “III” and the “G’s” are the “V”. Look at how many possibilities there are for the structure of the “C” chord.
You need to understand the structure of a chord in order to figure out how to build it.
Every chord has its own “voicing”. A voicing is the combinations of notes and their intervals all played together. The “C” chord above has a voicing of a “I - III - V” (C - E - G). These three notes played together in any order, constitutes a “C” chord.
So, what is an inversion?
Let’s think of those three notes in different orders of structure. “C - E - G” is the structure for the “C” chord. Let’s put the “C” note last in that order: “E - G - C”. Is it still a “C” chord? Yes! It is now known as the “1st inversion”. Now, let’s move the “E” to the back of the order: “G - C - E”. This is now the “2nd inversion” of a “C” chord.
What about using different root notes?
This method is used often on the piano. The right hand can play the different inversions while the left hand pedals the bass root note, or which ever note is suitable for the chord structure and progression in the song.
Elton John is notorious for substituting the left hand root note with the “III” of the chord. It is a common practice in song writing. These are called “poly-chords” or “slash” chords.
For example - have you ever played the “D/F#” chord? It is often used as a transition chord in a progression between the “G” chord and the “Em” chord. The “D” of that chord is the main chord. The “F#” is the “III” of the “D” chord, and is used as the bass line climbing down from the “G to the “Em”, or up from the “Em” to the “G”. You can hear this progression in the song “Landslide” from Fleetwood Mac.
Building a chord - any chord.
Chords are not just remembered by their shapes, but by their structures. Understanding what is required to build any chord, is half the battle. Let’s say that we want to change that above “C” chord to a “C minor” chord. All we have to do is change the “III” (E) to a “iii” (Eb), as you can see in this diagram:
The “E” is lowered to the minor third “iii” of the “C” chord, one half step to the “Eb”. The other two notes, C and G stayed in their original placements.
What if we wanted to add a note to our “C” chord?
Let’s add the dominant seventh “vii” (Bb) note to the “C” chord. This will now give us a “C7” chord:
We took the original “C” chord and simply added one new note. Can we add any note to the “C” chord to change it? Yes, but it helps to have note that sounds good.
Let’s go to our original “C” chord and add the major seventh “VII” “B” note to the chord. This will now give us the “CΔ” or “C major 7” chord.
* NOTE - When the Δ (Delta chord) is used in a chord, it automatically means that there is a “Major 7th” in the structure of the chord. It is used in many jazz and extended chords.
Let’s try another chord. Let’s add the “IX” (D) to the “C7” chord.
Why is “D” considered the “IX” of “C”? There are two octaves used to build chord structures in music. The “D” note is the “II” in the key of “C” major, but adding it to the “I - III - V” triad chord cannot be done because the “III” is already established in the chord and cannot replace the “III” with the “II”. We can only do this if there is NOT a “III” in the structure of the chord. This is why we go to the second octave “D” as the “IX” in the structure.
What if we did this same thing, but add that “D” to the “CΔ” chord? Can we do that? Yes! It’s called a “CΔ9”.
Let’s go really exotic and build a weird extended chord!
Let’s use our “C7” chord again, but let’s add some obscure note like the sharped 11th “#XI” (F#) to the chord. What would that sound like?
This chord is used often in jazz music as a transition chord. Ideally, you would want to find the easiest path to the structure of this chord, using maybe only four of the required notes. The shape I use is the “C” on the 8th fret of the 6th string, followed by the “Bb”, also on the 8th fret, but on the 4th string. (There’s our dominant 7th chord). Next, I add the “E” on the 9th fret of the 3rd string, followed by the “F#” on the 7th fret of the 2nd string. I mute the 5th and 1st strings to sound out the chord. By itself, it doesn’t sound like much. That’s why it needs to be in context of a progression as a transition chord.
Honestly, that’s all I have for now, but I hope that some of this helps you better understand chord structures, voicings, inversion ,etc. Music theory can get very complicated; but if you learn things like this, one step at a time, it makes it less complicated over time.
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Thanks, Dave.