Basic Guitar Chords

In previous articles, the minor and major chord basics have been demonstrated (see article Beginner Guitar Lessons Part 4 – Guitar Chords for Beginners). Moving on from the basic chords, you should be ready to learn to create your own chords using some very straightforward methods. Learning to create your own guitar chords is the most imperative part of learning guitar chords; in order to progress as a guitar player, you must fully understand where chords come from, and how to construct chords on your own. This lesson will give you the essential tools to understand basic guitar chords so that you can move toward creating your own.

Creating chords on your own is simple. For each chord – minor, major, or major 7th – all you need to do to produce a chord is choose certain notes out of the appropriate scale. For example, if you were using the key of “A” to make an A minor chord, then you would take notes from the A major scale.

Major Chord

The first chord, constructed from the A major scale (shown below), is an A major chord.

The second step is to take the 1st, 3rd and 5th steps from this scale, and place them in chord formation, like so:

Minor Chord

At this point, constructing an A minor chord is just as effortless. All you need to do is take the 1st step, a flatted 3rd step, and the 5th step from the A major scale. To create a flatted step or note, simply drop the note a semitone, or one fret. In this case, the 4th fret on the second string is lowered to the 3rd fret.

Major 7th Chord

Compared to traditional major and minor chords, the major 7th chord can sound more complicated, but in fact, the major 7th chord is quite simple. The only obvious difference between this chord and the other chords is that it contains 4 notes instead of 3. The chord is constructed using the root (1), 3rd, 5th, and a flat 7th. A major 7th chord in “A” would look similar to this.

One key thing to learn about guitar chords is that their placement on the fretboard is never set in stone. You can make this A major 7th chord virtually anywhere on the fretboard, as long as you can use the 1st (root), 3rd, 5th and flat 7th. Also, if you would like a louder or stronger-sounding chord, you can double up on notes by either playing the chord as a bar chord, or an open chord (this means playing the chord at the beginning of the fretboard or using a capo to simulate open notes). This gives you a great deal more freedom as to your style of playing even basic chords.