Sunday 10 February 2013

Dm Guitar Chord | Beginners Guitar Chords

Today's Guitar Chord of the day is D minor, an easy chord to play and another essential beginners chord shape. The Dm guitar chord is played with just 3 fingers, be careful not to let the bottom E string ring.
Dm guitar chord | beginners guitar chords
Dmin guitar chord

Here's the fingering for the Dminor chord, put your 1st finger on the 1st fret of the E string, your 2nd finger on the 2nd fret of the G string and your 3rd finger on the 2rd fret of the B string:


D minor guitar chord | beginners guitar chords
The Dminor chord uses these notes - D, F, A (that's why you don't want to play the open bottom E string as the note E is note in this chord)
Minor chords use these notes from the scale 1, b3, 5 and generally have a 'sad' sound compared to major chords.


Saturday 9 February 2013

Bb Guitar Chord | B flat guitar chord

Today's guitar chord of the day is Bb. There are two different ways to play this in first position, the first inversion is played like this:
Bb guitar chord
Bb guitar chord



Keep your fingertips close to the frets for the clearest sound, put your 1st finger on the 1st fret of the E string, 2nd finger on the 3rd fret of the D string, 3rd finger on the 3rd fret of the G string and your 4th finger on the 3rd fret of the B string:

bb guitar chord

The B flat guitar chord uses these notes: Bb, D and F
This chord can also be played using a barre across the 1st fret. Lay your first finger just behind the 1st fret like this:
b flat guitar chord


The Bb barre chord is fingered like this:

b flat major guitar chord
It take a little practice to play barre chords if you're used to playing open guitar chords, but this has the big advantage of being moveable, you can keep the same guitar chord shape and move to different frets to play different major chords:
  • 1st fret Bb chord
  • 2nd fret B chord
  • 3rd fret C chord
  • 4th fret C# chord
  • 5th fret D chord
  • 6th fret D#/Eb chord
  • 7th fret E chord
  • 8th fret F chord
  • 9th fret F#/Gb chord
  • 10th fret G chord
  • 11th fret G#/Ab chord
  • 12th fret A chord

Friday 8 February 2013

F Guitar Chord | Beginners Guitar Chords

Today's guitar chord of the day, is another guitar chord for beginners. After mastering the open chords, the next tricky chord to learn is Fmajor. This is a really useful chord because it's used lots in very common keys.

The F Major guitar takes a little bit of practice and is often the first chord that beginners learn to play using a barre. This is where one finger is laid flat to hold down more than one string. In this case the first finger is laid flat over the top E and B strings at the first fret. Using the edge of your finger rather than placing your finger flat helps the notes to sound clearly.
f major guitar chord | beginner guitar chords
F guitar chord | half-barre


Once you have your first finger holding down the E and B strings at the 1st fret, place your 2nd finger on the 2nd fret of the G string, and your 3rd finger on the 3rd fret of the D string. The A and bottom E strings are not played in this chord inversion. Here's the fingering for this guitar chord shape:
F guitar chord shape

If you've got the hang of this, you can also play the F major chord as a barre chord. Here the first finger is lying across all of the strings on the 1st fret. It takes a little more practice to play, but it does mean you can play all 6 strings.
f major barre chord | guitar chords
F major barre chord



And here's the fingering for F Barre Chord, it's still written as F major (or just plain F) but we're using a barre with our finger to play it:
F major barre chord


Practice changing between the Fmajor chord and the C major chord and try working through all of the beginner guitar chords listed here.

Wednesday 6 February 2013

D Augmented | Ting Tings Great DJ Guitar Chord

This D augmented chord is used on the intro of the Ting Ting's, Great DJ.


The D Augmented chord, can also be written as D+ and here is played together with a regular open D major chord. The augmented adds dissonance and tension.

D augmented guitar chord | D+ guitar chord
Daug guitar chord


Here's the fingering for the Daugmented chord:
d augmented guitar chord


D augmented can also be written as D major #5, D+
D augmented uses these notes D, F#, A#

Augmented chords are constructed from the root, 3 and #5. Augmented chords aren't used anywhere near as often as regular major and minor chords, however if you're looking to add a little tension to your music try throwing in an augmented guitar chord next time you're writing a song.

Sunday 3 February 2013

C Guitar Chord | Beginners Guitar Chords

The C Guitar Chord is one of the essential guitar chords for beginners to learn to play. The C guitar chord is made up of the notes C, E and G.
C guitar chord | beginners guitar chords
C guitar chord



To play this guitar place your 1st finger on the 1st fret of the B string, your 2nd finger on the 2nd fret of the D string and your 3rd finger on the 2rd fret of the A string. Hold these notes down with your fingertips and listen carefully to each string to make sure that each note of the guitar chord is sounding clearly.

Friday 1 February 2013

Allan Holdsworth Chords | Part Two

Continuing our series of posts looking at Allan Holdsworth's Guitar Chords, today we look at another inversion than can be taken through a chord scale.

Rather than using standard chord voicings, Allan Holdsworth views chords as being a member of a "family", the family name being the name of the scale from which that chord is derived. Any grouping of notes from that family can be substituted for the standard chord voicings, depending, of course on your own taste and the context in which they are used. For example, if the harmony calls for an Cmaj7, rather than playing a standard voicing, various combinations of notes all drawn from the Cmajor scale can be used.

Here an inversion is taken through the C major scale. As any of these chords can be used over any of the diatonic C major chords no chord names have been given. Although this inversion is taken directly through a scale, bear in mind that Allan usually uses a more complex approach moving between different inversions.

allan holdsworth guitar chords
Allan Holdsworth guitar chord


Moving each of the chord to the next scale note gives us the same inversion starting on the 3rd fret.
allan holdsworth guitar chords
Allan Holdsworth Guitar Chord2


Moving each scale note up gives us this inversion
allan holdsworth guitar chords
Allan Holdsworth guitar chord harmony



Moving each scale note up gives us this inversion that's an easier stretch than the last chord.
allan holdsworth guitar chords
Allan Holdsworth Guitar Chord 4

Moving each note up again takes us to our original chord inversion starting on the 8th fret.
allan holdsworth guitar chords
Allan Holdsworth Guitar Chord 5



And again at the 10th.
allan holdsworth guitar chords
Allan Holdsworth Guitar Chord 6


Finally a different inversion is created by moving each scale note up again.
allan holdsworth guitar chords
Allan Holdsworth Guitar Chord7


Moving the chord notes up to the next scale note would give us the same inversion we started with 12 frets higher.

Try taking other inversions 'for a walk' through a scale and substitute these for regular inversions that you might have used. Listen carefully to interesting melodies and check back soon for another guitar chord of the day.

If you liked like this post you might also be interested in the Frank Gambale Magic Chord posts.