- Hey, guitar players, it's Nate here,
and have you ever seen a guitar player
play something like this and think to yourself,
"Man, how in the world do they memorize
"all those chord shapes?"
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Well in this video I wanted to teach you 20 ways
to play the exact same chord, just so you can be
as versatile as possible when it comes to your rhythm
and actually your lead guitar playing too.
And this is really just getting to know
your basic chord shapes that are movable really well,
like your open C, G, E, A, and D
and getting to move them around the fretboard,
or at least that's part of it,
so let's go ahead and get into this.
We're gonna be using a G major chord
for all of these shapes,
and when I talk about a G major chord,
I'm talking about a simple triad,
just the three notes in a G major chord, G, B, and D.
So all of these notes have to be in these chords.
So start with a simple G major,
open G major shape,
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that'll be your first one.
The second one,
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is still a G major but it's a different
voicing than guitar players like to use.
Kinda for more of a modern sound.
This is a different sound for your open G major chord.
The next shape that were gonna look at is
the E major bar chord shape.
And really, kind of the whole point of this video
is to help you get out of the box of using
just open chord shapes, or just E and A bar chord shapes.
But here is an E major bar chord shape playing
a G major chord.
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And for this all you do is take your open E major
and move the root notes up,
which is the low E string, or at least that's gonna
be our reference point until, you get to a G,
which is on the third fret
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of the sixth string.
Next shape uses the open D shape, and it's the same idea,
you're just gonna take your open D and move it up,
until your root notes land on a G, and to do that
I just make my D with my second, third, and fourth fingers,
and use my index fingers, kind of a movable nut,
and it ends up with that root note on the D string
on the fifth fret,
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for a G major chord using a D shape.
C major shape is next, and all you have to do, again,
is move your C shape up, your open C,
to where you can find the root notes,
and again make it with your second, third,
and fourth fingers, and then just move it up.
And there's a G right there on the tenth fret
of the A string, and that's where I'll plant that,
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to play a G major chord using the C shape.
A major shape next, same thing,
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make an A major and move it up to where your root notes
are on a G, your bar will be on the tenth fret.
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And that's how you make a G major chord using the A shape.
And this is a little tight up here so I'd probably switch
over to the double bar kind of thing.
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And that's it for your basic, fundamental, movable kind
of open chord shapes.
If I take my G and go back to my G,
I end up all the way up here, one octave higher,
than where I started.
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Now what we're gonna do is take these five,
kind of core fundamental shapes and break them apart,
into smaller pieces up and down the fretboard
and that's where you see a lot of players
playing where you're like, "Man, I don't
"recognize that chord shape," like this.
You may not recognize this as part of a C chord.
So let's go back down to our open G chord and start looking
at these little partial shapes.
Okay, remember all you need to make a G major chord
is G, B, and D, it's your major triad.
So if you wanna make a root position triad,
all you really have to do is take your G shape
and play just the bottom three strings,
and you get G, B, and D.
So you don't have to play the whole shape,
you can play just this for a different sound
or a different voicing.
Same thing, the next shape, takes the root out of
the bottom and puts the third in the bottom.
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Still playing just G, B, and D,
but we have the third and the bottom
are first inversion triads, so B, D, and then G on top.
And then the last kind of shape, for this G shape,
or partial shape for this G shape, is this right here.
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And you have your D in the bottom.
So it's a second inversion triad,
and you have D, G, your B is here,
and you can throw another G on top if you want.
In case you don't wanna play this full voicing,
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play just the top three or four strings there.
But if you wanna get all Gs, Bs and Ds in there you have
to have all four, 'cause you're doubling up on Gs here.
Let's move on to the E major bar chord shape.
Playing a G, and kind of break this one apart
to get some different voicings too.
You can play just the bottom four strings
and you'll still have Gs, Bs and Ds
that we don't have to make an entire bar as well.
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In order to give you a little bit different sound
instead of the whole kind of bright and cheery top there
you can get just the bottom.
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So that's a root position G major.
And then if you want a first inversion G major,
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just B, D, and G, this isn't the shape for that,
but I'm still thinking about this shape right here,
we're visualizing it.
And if you want a second inversion, just those three notes,
check this out, this is really cool,
you can play just your E shape,
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and you end up with D, G, and B.
One chord that I use a lot is kind of the next chunk
of this bigger shape, and it's just a root position,
G major triad.
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Like this, I really like this one.
It's kind of a nice, middle of the road.
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Not too full like this, and not so generic like
a regular open G major.
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And the last one for this little shape,
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is just the top three strings of this one.
So you have a G on top a B on the bottom,
and a D the fifth, in the middle there.
This is a good voicing for something really bright.
Maybe even all the way up here on the neck.
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Okay, I really like this next shape, just the D shape
that uses a G, because I found it really useful
for playing voicings that don't have
so many low strings in them.
But, if you remember the D shape we moved up here,
what you can do is play just the actual D shape
and leave the low string out.
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And you're still playing a G major triad,
a G, B, D, it just has the fifth as the lowest note,
so it's a second inversion G major triad.
And this is a really good one to memorize the names
of the notes on B string, just kinda moving this around,
like to G, or A, back to G.
Moving on to the C chord shape, this one.
Nobody wants to play this bar chord shape,
it's really tough.
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But there are some really good partial chords
you can use in here.
The first one I really like
for a really dark sounding voicing for a G major,
and it looks just like an E major,
only moved over a string set.
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And it's a second inversion G major, 'cause it has
a D the fifth in the base.
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But my root note is right here on the A string,
so that's kind of where kind of my home base is,
or my point of reference.
It's a G major, second inversion.
Next one for this shape, is just a root position triad,
and I'm thinking about this C major shape,
but I'm only playing those three notes right there in a row.
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And the next one, this one I use a lot too.
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It's a first inversion, 'cause the third is in the base,
and you can still visualize this whole C shape,
just leave the root out
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of the bottom root, third, fifth.
And I use this one a lot
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for that type of stuff, even like some Rolling Stones
kind of stuff.
And if you'll notice on top of this, when we already went
over this one, but the D shape is right here on top
of that C shape as well, so that's redundant,
but it's a really good kind of point of reference to use
for this C shape.
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Now as you kind of play around with these chord shapes
you're gonna notice that they do kind of overlap a lot,
there's some redundancies like I said, and that really
becomes clear on our last shape to pick apart, the A shape.
So the full A bar chord shape, the first one
we wanna pull out of here is just the A shape itself,
you can play just those three notes on the twelfth fret,
the root is right there on the G string.
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And that gives you your G major chord,
G, B, and D, with the fifth and the base,
so it's a second inversion.
And now if I were to put the third down here.
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It's a really hard chord to play
but it would be just like this chord
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that we played down here, with the G shape,
the first inversion G shape.
So, that would be redundant, I don't wanna include it
and just to really get to be able to visualize that as well
with this A.
The last little chunk for this A shape
is just the top three strings, G, B, and D,
root position G major triad.
And this is a great chord to play,
kind of a sparkling voicing on top
if another guitar player is already playing
an open voicing or bar chord, something like that,
or if you're playing with a piano player
and you just need some high end.
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So you may be thinking,
"Nate, that's a lot of stuff to remember."
The key to it is just to realize
that the five main, major chord voicings are all
that you really need to think about,
and you probably already know them
if you've been playing guitar for awhile.
All you have to do is get used to visualizing them
up and down the fretboard.
So take one chord, like this G,
and move all those shapes around.
Maybe this week, maybe next week, take another chord,
like an A, and move all those shapes around
to the A locations, and eventually you'll get
to where your memorizing the fretboard better,
it's blossoming open into a whole new world,
♪ A whole new world ♪
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And then you'll be able to play triads, and chord voicings
for major or minor chords the more you work on this,
anywhere you want on the fretboard.
So are there one of these shapes that you struggle with?
I know that for the longest time
for me playing this D chord shape
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and moving that around was really tough
to go right to, but, it's just like anything else on guitar,
man, just think back to when you were learning
your open C major chord, it took awhile to get that down,
it's gonna take awhile to get that down too.
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Let me know in the comments below,
don't forget to like and subscribe and I'll see you later.
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