Many great guitar songs rely on just a few chords; learn to play them and you could write your own masterpiece!
As the first step of writing a song, selecting its key is essential. This choice determines both chords and melody while setting rhythmic structures within your composition.
Major Triads
Triads are groups of three notes taken from the major scale – a root note (first chord), third, and fifth note – which make up a triad chord. As these forms can be moved up and down the fret board while staying on one group of strings, triads may even be inverted so as to switch around their order of outer notes.
C major’s first inversion is C E G; moving this form up an octave reveals C D F, often known as an open C major chord with fifth in bass position.
Triads can be used alone or as part of larger chord progressions, offering expressive qualities with melodies and riffs, arpeggios (where individual notes are played individually rather than all at once), and chord sequences.
Minor Triads
Although these chord shapes may not be as practical for playing purposes as major chord shapes, they do serve to broaden chord progressions and create more harmonic variety – thus justifying learning them to expand musical horizons.
Just like major triads, minor triads are constructed by stacking thirds starting from their root note. As with major triads, minor triads are movable forms which can be moved along the fretboard by barring all three strings with your pointer finger; this technique is known as the Triad Pairs technique and yields some interesting chords.
As part of your minor triad studies, it’s advisable to practice them both as block chords and arpeggios to get acquainted with their sound qualities. Also practice all 12 keys – this allows you to transpose as necessary and explore every fretboard note! Finally, be sure to practice each string’s individual triad shapes for added chord progression skills.
Major Sevens
Chords form the core of our melody, helping to express emotions and tell stories through music. Major seventh chords provide a dreamy, sophisticated sound to progressions; these triads contain an extra tone which adds unique flavor.
Building a major seventh chord is a straightforward process that begins by taking any regular major triad and adding one note that forms a major seventh interval above it (for instance Cmaj7 would consist of C, E and G). This gives it a romantic yet serene sound compared to more dissonant dominant seventh chords.
To learn major seventh chords, it is essential to master open position shapes first. From there, experiment with various voicings (note order) all across the neck until you find one you like; see chart below for four drop 2 major seventh chord voicings which can easily be moved up and down fretboard.
Minor Sevens
Minor seven chords (min7 or m7 for short) resemble major seventh chords but with a lesser sound. Like major sevenths, they feature a major triad with an added minor seventh that creates tension and instability before eventually resolving to their tonic chord.
Think of them as adding depth and color to your music, like adding seasoning to enhance its flavor. They are common across various musical genres.
Build them two ways – either by stacking thirds or altering the notes of a major 7th chord. Let’s consider each method individually: For stacking thirds, build a minor triad by adding a flattened major seventh tone (A minor would have three notes: A C E). With this approach you can move this shape up or down the neck to play in any key.