What I would like to do, for the sake of this article as an introduction only, is to get you to look at the guitar for playing chords as groups of four notes. Typically your fretting hand only has four notes to work with because you only have four fingers to use. There are exceptions (barring, using the thumb, etc…) but I want you to start looking at building chord structures differently, so we’ll keep to the four-finger rule. In doing so, we recognize that since we only have four notes/fingers to use, essentially we can only use four strings on the guitar at a time. In applying this method we come up with fifteen possible four-string string groups:

(1 = high E string, 2 = B string, 3 = G string, etc…)

1234
1235
1236
1245
1246
1256
1345
1346
1356
1456
2345
2346
2356
2456
3456

That’s certainly a lot of string group combinations, so for the time being I want to concentrate on only one group – 2345; we’re going to make this as simple as possible. So, in using the 2345 group that means we’re only going to play chords using the B, G, D, and A strings. This is the most comfortable playing area of the guitar. (We’ll go beyond this a bit later.)

The guitar poses another unique problem (in addition to only having six strings). Unlike the piano, playing large chords (7th chords, 9th chords, etc…) while retaining their original note stacking in thirds is incredibly difficult to do. The arm and hand just aren’t capable of spreading wide enough to accommodate these notes, given the fact that guitars are tuned in 4ths (the exception being the major 3rd tuning between the ‘G’ and ‘B’ strings). Because of this, the guitar is perfectly suited for playing the chords in inversions.

Let’s start in the key of C, using a CMaj7 chord. The stacked version of this chord is C, E, G, B. On the guitar, this chord would be played:

(If you don’t know how to read chord charts like this one, you can do some Internet searching and find out. It’s pretty easy.)

Okay, so there is a CMaj7 chord. Simple enough, right? Well, what happens if you want to play an F#m7 to C#7 progression?

This is a bit difficult, don’t you think? Especially at fast tempos.

So, the solution is to use chord inversions to make the fingerings more accessible. But, we don’t just want to put the root of the chord on the top and try to stack the rest; you’d end up with the same problem. What we want to do is figure out the easiest (and best-sounding) way to voice the chords on the guitar. Going back to our CMaj7 example (C, E, G, B) we can voice the chord this way:

From lowest string to highest the notes are C, G, B, and E. By simply changing around the order the notes of the chord are positioned, you get an easy-to-play chord with the interval of a fifth from the bottom, which as I said in my last article is a very strong sound to the listener.

Cool, so play this chord a few times and get used to the sound.

Okay, that’s enough. Now what we want to do is figure out how to play the inversions of this chord using the 2345 string group. To do this, you take the first note (in this case we’ll start on the ‘C’ note on the A string) and find the closest chord tone. The closest chord tone from C is ‘E’. Since we have to stay on the A string, the logical answer would be to play this ‘E’ on the 9th fret. Continuing with this method for the other three notes, you end up with this voicing:

You may have to switch your fingers around so it’s more comfortable, but what we have now is the first inversion of a CMaj7 chord (since the first chord we played had the ‘C’ as the lowest/root note, going to the next note of ‘E’ makes it first inversion). The order of notes is now E, B, C, and G.

Continuing on to the next inversion we get:

And finishing up with the last inversion:

Since the last inversion (7th in the bass) starts at the twelfth fret, you can technically move this down an octave – using the open G string – and play the same chord an octave lower.

There you have it; a CMaj7 chord in all inversions using the 2345 string group. It’s quite simple, actually. The hard part is committing these voicings to memory so you don’t really have to think about where they are on the fretboard. The reason these voicings are so important is that it allows you to not only introduce fresh sounds into your playing, but it also allows you to play in position so you don’t have to continuously shift up and down the neck to play chords.

If I may be so inclined as to assign homework, what I would like for you to do now is apply the same principles for the CMaj7 chord to the following string groups:

3456
1234
1235
2346

These are the ‘major’ string groups, and if you can master them you’ll have no problem playing most styles of music. I’m assuming, of course, that you’ve already mastered the power chord. One thing to remember is that every chord and string group is not going to necessarily start on the root of the chord. We were lucky (coincidence?) that the lowest chord tone of a CMaj7 on the 2345 string group family was ‘C’; you won’t be so lucky with the other string groups. I’ll give you a hint, for the 3456 string group, the first CMaj7 chord you’ll be figuring out is the first inversion (‘E’ is the lowest note), which starts on the second fret of the D string.

To be honest, this will take you quite a while. It’s certainly not easy, but the payoff is tremendous. Once you have a firm grasp of the CMaj7 chord, you need to then figure out ALL of the Maj7 chords (C#Maj7, F#Maj7, BMaj7, EMaj7, AMaj7, etc…). This will be significantly easier once you have the chord structures for the Maj7 chord committed to memory, but it will take some time to remember which note each chord starts on. Hey… no one said this stuff was going to be a cake walk (on Easy Street…).

Great, so it’s now a year later, and you can finally play the Maj7 chord in all keys and inversions using the five major string group families. Think you’re done? Um… no. You need to apply the same principles to min7, dom7, min7b5, and diminished chords next. This should be a bit easier, as you only have to change one or two notes from one chord to the next to get the different tonalities.

Some Thought Nuggets

I know this is a lot of work. Believe me, I still struggle with these chords and inversions every day myself; not to mention having to deal with altered dominant chords like dom7#5#9 or min11 chords. It’s a lifelong process. The good news is that after a while this work actually becomes fun. Trying to figure out what voicings sound good together is a matter of personal taste, and helps to give you an original voice. All of the great players (jazz or otherwise) have certain harmonic devices that they use which makes them sound unique. What will your devices be?

There are two more important points that I want to make. I want you to let these thoughts percolate for a while, and then next time you play/jam try to see how you can apply them. Firstly, keep in mind that you don’t always have to play all of the notes of the chord. Quite often jazz players, for example, will only play the 3rd and 7ths of each chord. Other times they may leave the 5th of the chord out. In the cases of extended voice chords (13ths, #11 chords, etc…) you won’t be able to play all of the chord tones using the four-finger method. In these cases you need to think about what chord tones are the most important. For example, when I play the blues I often like to play a Bb13 chord instead of the stock Bb7 chord. The common voicing for the Bb13 chord in root position is this:

It’s an easy chord to play, and it sounds great. The notes of this voicing from lowest to highest are Bb (the root), Ab (the 7th), D (the 3rd), and E (the 13th). The fifth isn’t really necessary in this case, and most of the time when playing a 13th chord you would substitute the 13th for the 5th anyway. That being said, however – and coming into the second point I want to address – why do I need to play the Bb note? I mean, most of the time I’m playing with a bass player, and if he’s doing his job correctly he’s walking through that Bb enough for the both of us. In that particular situation, is it really necessary to ALSO play the Bb? Probably not. In fact, by NOT playing the Bb you actually open up the sound quite a bit and prevent the sound from becoming too “bottomy.”

So by taking out the root we arrive at this voicing:

It’s very “hip” sounding, and in conjunction with a bass player walking through Bb7 (or a bass player even just riding the Bb note) it leaves a lot of open space for everyone else.

With this method now you can go back to all of the original chord structure work you just did and try playing chords by taking out certain notes. Also try exchanging extended range chord tones with others. So, replace the 3rd of a chord with the #11th, or replace the root with the 9th, etc… You will see your chord vocabulary grow exponentially, and your musicality will also increase tenfold in no time!

One last thing and I’ll give your brains a rest. Let’s go back to the last chord example we used – the Bb13 with the root taken out:

As you work through your chords, you may (hopefully) notice that this particular voicing is the same as playing an E7#9 chord without its root. The E7#9 chord looks like this:

Take out the root (in this case the ‘E’ on the A string) and you have the same exact chord as the Bb13 with no root. The “killing two birds with one stone” mantra applies greatly here, as you now have access to two chords using the same voicing – both with no root and therefore more open for the rest of the band to play with. You should go through all of your chords with this idea in mind and see how many you can come up with.

That’s about it for this lesson. The more I work on these ideas and commit them to paper, the more ideas I have for future articles. As always, please honor me with feedback and suggestions so I know if this information is helping and what else you would like to see.

Enjoy!