An extensive guitar chords library will help you quickly memorize many chord shapes & their finger positions on the fretboard. ChordBank contains over 2,700 chord voicings with suggested fingerings for you to use as study aids.
A chord consists of at least three notes (intervals) which combine to produce a distinct sound. Check out our guitar music theory tutorial to gain further understanding about this concept.
Power Chords
Power chords offer an ideal way to start exploring more advanced guitar techniques. Consisting of the root note and fifth, these non-major or minor chords are used across a wide variety of musical genres and musical styles. Furthermore, they often appear in amplified rock music using heavy tone distortion, as it enhances their individual notes even further and makes them sound louder than they otherwise would on their own.
Power chords are typically played using all four fingers on the bottom three strings, although you can also create them using just two, with your ring finger barring one string an octave higher than another. You can make your power chords more expressive by including additional intervals like major seventh or ninth intervals – something often employed by emo bands for added emotional crunch. Finally, power chords offer immense versatility allowing them to be played anywhere on the fretboard.
7th Chords
Seventh chords are one of the most frequently encountered extensions of basic triads found in music, adding harmonic variety and texture to chord progressions.
Like triads, seventh chords can always be broken into thirds; however, unlike triads they may contain more than one voicing option, creating an array of tonal colors and possibilities.
Example of the Ii7/mi7 chord created from taking a minor 7th and flattening it to form a half-diminished chord; this voicing is often seen in jazz music.
An easy way to identify a seventh chord is to look at its clef symbols (or open spacing with no doublings) and see if there is an arrangement with three elements – bottom, two middles, and head – all present at once. If this occurs then it is considered a seventh chord while otherwise it would be classified as a triad.
Major Chords
Major chords are among the most frequently used in any guitar song, as they’re easy to use and produce an infectious, cheerful sound. Plus, they work well when building progressions since they work with multiple chords simultaneously.
The basic major chord is composed of three notes, often referred to as a major triad. Once you learn how to play a C major chord, any other major chord can be created by adding the second note in scale and then the third – this simple rule will help you form numerous different major chords!
Chords are an integral component of guitar playing and may be difficult to memorize. By learning chord intervals and following the 1 3 5 rule, memorizing these will become much simpler. Once memorized, it becomes much simpler assembling them on the fretboard to form many types of chords.
Minor Chords
Minor chords often connote melancholic or serious music, yet their impact can be tremendously powerful in song. Major classics such as Fur Elise by Beethoven or Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C minor have utilized minor chords while folk classics such as Summertime”, A Taste of Honey” or Round Midnight” all use them extensively.
Minor chords resemble major chords by consisting of three notes – a root note, minor third and minor fifth – but differ by having a lower third than in its related major scale – making the chord sound sadder.
Chord Finder will scan thousands of fretboards to identify all possible “voicings” of each chord. Each voicing has its own fingerings that can be dragged across the fretboard to show how the chord is played; additional options include muting strings or adding fingers by clicking directly on it; finally you can save each chord into MyChords so that it can easily become part of songs you can perform live!