Guitar Chord Voicings: Playing Up The Neck

Overview

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Many beginning guitarists have learned the basics of open and movable chord shapes, but want to further expand this chord knowledge. In this course you’ll learn how to construct and play triads and basic 7th chords. You’ll start by creating major and minor triad inversions, and move on to power chords, drop-2 voicings, and learn how to substitute common chords to create a richer harmonic experience for listeners. Throughout the course, you will focus on the notes that chords are made up of, rather than the shape of individual chords. With this knowledge, you will be able to create inversions and different chord voicings up and down, and across the entire fretboard of the guitar, thus unlocking new ways of playing the guitar.

Syllabus

Welcome to Guitar Chord Voicings: Playing Up The Neck!

Welcome to the course! Here we will cover all the details about the course and what you'll need to know to get the most out of your experience.

Triad Inversions

In this lesson, we'll learn how to rearrange the notes in a triad to create inversions. Inversions can be difficult to conceptualize on the guitar since the same pitch can be found on different frets and different strings. We'll work to make this concept as easy as possible by inverting triads from the high strings to low and from the lower range of the neck up to the higher frets. The more you know about chords on the guitar, the larger the number of options for you to use!

Barre and Power Chords

Power chords and barre chords represent a huge amount of the vocabulary used by guitarists in rock and pop music. Although they may be a bit tough on your fretting fingers at first, the many applications of these shapes make the effort worthwhile. In this lesson, we'll cover various exercises that will give you greater facility and command of these chords.

Seventh Chords: Drop-2

There are several ways to learn new voicing shapes on the guitar. Drop-2 is a term used at Berklee to describe a configuration of chord tones, pleasing to the ear, and, more importantly to guitarists, relatively easy to execute on the fretboard. It's the best way to play seventh chords on four consecutive strings. This lesson is going to give you plenty of practice in creating new voicing shapes on the fretboard and will help you develop the ability to play various seventh chords in all keys.

Chord Substitutions, Diatonic Chords, and Gospel Chords

We've learned many guitar voicings for triads and seventh chords. This lesson will help you to solidify your grasp of Drop-2 Seventh chords. We'll also explore some new ways of using what we've already learned. Finally, we'll look at how to substitute chords using a standard lead sheet.