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Bar Chord Songs for Beginners and Intermediate

Today I have a great list of songs for learning and improving your bar chords. I’ll also show you how to apply bar chords to a song.

Once you have practiced open chords and spent some fair amount of time learning beginner songs you are ready to learn bar chords. While you can apply bar chords to any song you like, there are typical bar chord songs that are a perfectly suited for the bar chord practitioner.

For your first bar chord song it’s a good idea to use a combination of open chords and bar chords. Bar chords are a bit tricky in the beginning so start with a song and implement bar chords as well as the easier open chords. You can turn any chord into a bar chord, so pick one or two to start with. With practice you can gradually build up the amount of bar chords you put in a song. When you feel comfortable enough you can play your songs using solely bar chords.

There are four main bar chord shapes you can use in your songs: E-shape, A-shape, Em-shape and Am shape (see diagrams below).

The A-shape bar chord can be played in two ways: The A-shape (second diagram on the left) that uses the standard fingering and the A-shape (first diagram on the right) with the alternative fingering which is also a very popular one. Eventually you want to learn both of them.

You can move each bar chord shape up and down the neck which changes the name of the chord. This way you can play the bar chord shape in every key. A full explanation of this can be found in How to Play, Locate, Memorize and Practice Bar Chords

SETTING UP BAR CHORD PROGRESSIONS

By using the E-shape and A-shape you can play each bar chord in two ways. For example: The “C” chord can be played as an E-shape bar chord on the 8th fret or as an A-shape chord on the 3rd fret. They are both C chords only on a different position on the neck. (See Major and Minor Bar Chord Shapes lists below).

How to Play The Many Graceful Minor 7 Chords

By Klaus Crow 8 Comments

The Min7 chord is a beautiful way to enhance the minor chord. It gives it some extra colour and depth. It sounds kind of contemplative and a bit more sophisticated than your standard minor chord. It’s a graceful chord.

The minor 7th chord is used widely in every style of music and today we’re going to learn how to play it in a different set of varieties and build it from the ground up.

We’re going to look at “open” Minor 7th chords (open strings involved), moveable Min7 chords (no open strings involved) with the root note starting at the Low E (6th string), A-string (5th string) and the D-string (4th string), and finally some more beautiful sounding min7 chords you might not have played before, but are an asset to your chord vocabulary.

MIN7 CHORD CONSTRUCTION – MUSIC THEORY

A minor chord consist of the root (1), flatted third (b3) and fifth (5) notes (1 b3 5) of the major scale. The minor 7th chord (min7) consists of the root (1), flatted third, fifth and flatted seventh notes (1 b3 5 b7) of the major scale. That means only the b7 is added to the minor chord.

For example, if you take the notes of the C major scale = C D E F G A B C
The C minor chord (Cm) consists of the notes: C Eb G (1 b3 5)
The C minor 7 chord (Cm7) consists of the notes: C eb G Bb (1 b3 5 b7)

Another example: A major scale = A B C# D E F# G# A
The Amin chord consists of the notes: A C E (1 b3 5)
The Amin7 chord consists of the notes: A C E G (1 b3 5 b7)

This way you can build or analyze any Min7 chord:

Note: In the chord diagrams above: the black dots above the nut are open strings, and the letters in the dots indicate the note names.

3rds Intervals over 5 Major Scale Shapes/Positions

By Klaus Crow 3 Comments

I hope you are doing okay with everything that is going on now. These are crazy times, but we have to make the best of it. We have to help each other out while keeping a safe distance, be considerate of others, smile to people to relieve a bit of their burden, but with all that don’t forget yourself along the way. Being kind to yourself too. Have a bit of fun. Try to enjoy the present moment.

For those of you who stay at home, you might have some more time on your hands now to enjoy the guitar, develop a nice practice routine, and make some good progress. Well, here’s a great guitar workout for you…

Practicing melodic intervals really developed my skills to solo and improvise over major chord progressions. Just by going through the scale intervals on a regular basis you are training the muscle memory for your fingers and acquiring the vocabulary for your creative mind to help you shape your musical brain and come up with melodic ideas. It’s an exercise that is not to be underestimated.

In this lesson we are going to learn “melodic intervals in 3rds” following the major scale. We’ll practice these 3rd intervals over 5 different scale shapes/positions across the neck, so we’ve got a great workout for you! Don’t worry we’ll take it step by step.

Make sure you know the major scale in 5 shapes/positions before you start this lesson, but on the other hand you can also skip that for now if you just became excited to dive into this lesson. You can always come back to that later. I can imagine you want to try at least the first exercise to know what we’re talking about here. I totally understand.

Another upside is that the exercises will train your ear to recognize 3rd intervals. This will improve your aural skills, which is a important part of becoming an accomplished musician (Try to sing along the notes as you play the exercises). The practice of playing the intervals will also increase your dexterity. A win-win situation in many ways.

How to Play and Build Maj7 Chords on Guitar

By Klaus Crow 5 Comments

Today we’re going to learn how to play Maj7 chords and how to build them from scratch.

The Major 7th chord is a mesmerising chord which is commonly found in jazz music, but also in pop music and world music it is regularly used to express a beautiful hypnotizing or dream-like sound.

We’re going to look at open Major 7th chords (open strings involved), moveable Maj7 chords (containing no open strings) with the root note located on different strings, starting at the Low E (6th string), A-string (5th string) and the D-string (4th string), and Maj7 bar / barre chords.

First things first, let’s take a look how to build a major 7 chord.

CHORD CONSTRUCTION / ANALYSIS

Major chords consist of the root, 3rd and 5th notes of the major scale (1 3 5). The major 7th chord (Maj7) consists of the root (1), 3rd, 5th and 7th notes of the major scale (1 3 5 7). That means the 7th note of the major scale is added to the major chord.

For example, if you take the notes of the C major scale = C D E F G A B C
The Cmaj7 chord consists of the notes: C E G B (1 3 5 7)

If you take the D major scale = D E F# G A B C# D
The Dmaj7 chord consists of the notes: D F# A C# (1 3 5 7)

This way you can build or analyze any Maj7 chord:

Note: In the chord diagrams above: the black dots above the nut are open strings, and the letters in the dots indicate the note names.

Here are some popular songs that use the major 7 chord:
Old friends by Paul Simon starting with Fmaj7 and Cmaj7, capo on 4th fret.
Something by The Beatles: Amaj7 chord (second chord of the verse)
Maybe tomorrow by Stereophonics: Ebmaj7 chord (first chord of the song) Under the bridge by the Red hot chili peppers: Emaj7 chord (at the end of each verse).

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