Dominant Seventh Chords

Dominant Seventh Chords - Theory And Practice

This article is going to discuss the dominant 7th chords, usually just abbreviated to 7, e.g. E7 and A7. Don't confuse the dominant 7th chord with the major seventh chord. The major 7th chords,or maj7, are a different chord.

Unlike the Major Chord and Minor Chord lessons where I just showed you the chord shapes and fingerings, I'm going to show you a little music theory, major scale theory, chord formula, and learn how to play dominant 7th chords.

First off, I'm going to show you what the major scale looks like. Starting off at the root note and going up to the same note one octave higher, it goes:

whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half

Where whole is a whole tone, or two frets on the guitar, and half is one fret.

If we take the E Major scale, the root note is the open sixth string. The diagram below shows the notes on the sixth string of the guitar.

Notes On The Sixth String

Counting up the fretboard, the notes of the E Major scale are E F# G# A B C# D# and E.

The Major chord uses the first, third, and fifth notes of the Major scale. The E Major chord consists of E, G#, and B. The diagram below shows the E Major chord. Starting from the sixth string, the notes played are E, B, E, G#, B, and E.

E Major Chord

The 7th chord formula is the first, third, fifth, and flatted seventh notes of the Major scale. E7 consists of E, G#, B, and D. The first version of E7 below uses all four fingers and can't be used as a bar chord. The notes are E, B, E, G#, D, and E.

E7 Chord

The next version of E7 below only uses three finger and can be used as a bar chord further up the neck of the guitar. The notes are E, B, D, G#, D, and E.

E7 Chord

This last version of E7 is even easier and uses only two fingers. The notes are E, B, D, G#, B, and E.

E7 Chord

You should see now that there are different ways of playing the same chord. As long as the four notes E, G#, B, and D are played, it's an E7 chord.

We're now going to take three variations of E7 and move it up the fretboard to play a G7 chord. Remember that we can't use the first version because it uses all four fingers and doesn't leave the first finger free to form the bar.

Using the same principle as before, the notes of the G Major scale are G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G. The first, third, fifth, and flatted seventh notes forming the G7 chord are G, B, D, and F.

The  diagram below shows the second version of E7 moved up to the 3rd fret to form G7. The notes are G, D, F, B, F, and G.

G7 Chord

Finally, the diagram below shows the easy two finger version of E7 moved up to the 3rd fret to give G7. The notes are G, D, F, B, D, and G.

G7 Chord

If either of these two chord shapes are moved up to the fifth fret, we have an A7 chord, Move it up to the seventh fret, we have a B7 chord, and so on.

Learn Guitar Chords – Minor Chords

Now that you’ve learnt two basic major chord patterns, and learnt how to move them to different positions on the fretboard, I’m going to show you two minor chord shapes.

What I’m not going to do this time, is show you both the chordbook fingerings and my fingerings. I’ll just be showing the fingering I use. You should now understand why I play them the way I do.

Below is the E minor chord, or E min or Em with the root note on the sixth string.

E Minor Chord

Notice how this chord is the same as the E Major chord, except the second finger is lifted off the third string and it’s now played open.

Using the same principle as before, we can now slide this up the fretboard and press the first finger down across the strings at the third fret to produce the G minor chord below.

G Minor Chord

Just in case you haven't yet learnt the notes on the sixth string, here they are again:

Sixth String Notes

That’s the first minor chord shape. The second shape below is the A min chord.

A Minor Chord

There’s a few things to notice with this chord. The root note of this chord is on the fifth string, the A note. This means that, strictly speaking, the open sixth string E note shouldn’t be played. Same with the A major chord, the E note is part of the chord, so you can play it if you want to.

The difference between the A Major chord and the A Minor chord isn’t just a matter of lifting off one finger and playing a string open as with the E Major and E Minor chords.

Funny thing is, the A Minor chord shape and fingering is identical to the E Major chord shape except that the fingers are moved up one string higher. This might help you remember it.

Again, this chord can be moved up the keyboard. Again, at the third fret, below is the C Minor, or  C min or Cm, chord.

C Minor Chord

Here are the fifth string notes again:

Fifth String Notes

You should be getting the idea now. By knowing the notes on your fifth and sixth strings, and by knowing just a couple of different chord shapes, you should be able to play any chord you want.

There’s more chord shapes to learn when you’re ready. I’ve tried to show you the two easiest to remember and use. There are more than just the major and minor chords, they will be in the following articles.

Learn Guitar Chords – Major Chords

This series of articles will teach you basic guitar chords and then show you how to play these guitar chords at different positions on the fretboard to give different chords. We will start off with basic Major chord patterns first.

Take a look at the chord below. This is the chordbook version of the E Major chord, usually abbreviated to just E.

E Major Chord

The fingering I prefer to use is shown below

E Major Chord

This leaves my first finger floating above the strings. I can then move this chord to any position on the fretboard and lay my first finger down forming a bar across the first, second, and sixth strings one fret below my second finger.

The root note of this chord is the note being played on the sixth string. By knowing all the notes on the sixth string, you can play any Major chord on the guitar.

Just in case you don’t know the notes on the sixth string, here they are:

Notes On The Sixth String

Using this principle, we can move the first finger up to the third fret to play a G Major chord or the fifth fret to play an A Major chord. The G chord is shown below.

G Major Chord

The problem with this is that if you want to change from a G chord to D chord, you have to slide from the third fret right up to the tenth fret. This is where the next chord shape comes in handy.

A Major Chord

This is an A Major, or just A, chord. Note the X at the sixth string showing that this string isn’t played. This isn’t the text book fingering for this chord. You usually see variations of the first, second, and third fingers being used but I find it a bit cramped so I would use the fingering above if I was going to press each string with a different finger.

Played like this, you still have the first finger floating over the strings so you can slide it up the fretboard and hold down the first and fifth strings with your first finger bar.

The root note of this chord is the note being played on the fifth string. In the example above, it’s the open A note. Here’s the fifth string notes to learn just in case you don’t already know them:

Notes On The Fifth String

The problem is that you might have trouble changing from this chord shape to the previous one and back quickly. This is my lazy man’s A chord:

A Major Chord

Here, you’ve replaced the second, third, and fourth fingers with a third finger bar. This might take some practice to get the finger pressed down on the strings and bent at the joint so that the first string still sounds clean and not muted.

Notice, that I’ve also shown the sixth string being played. In theory, the lowest note played should be the root note of the chord, in this case A. The open sixth string, E is actually part of the A Major chord, but in theory again, this chord would be called A/E. This means it’s an A Major chord with E being the lowest note played.

Whether you play the sixth string or not is up to you, see how it sounds. Even if you can’t get the first string to play, you will still get the E note from the note played on the fourth string. It all depends on your playing style. If you’re going to strum and play properly, you want all the notes to sound cleanly. If you’re going to thrash and turn up the distortion, it doesn’t matter whether you play the sixth string or not or whether the first string note is playing clean. Just practice at it and find what’s best for you.

Using this chord shape, the diagram below shows it moved up to the third fret to produce a C chord.

C Major Chord

You’ll now see that changing from a G chord to a D chord doesn’t need moving from the third fret to the tenth, just to the fifth.

Here’s a tip to change from one chord shape to the other and back quickly. When you change from the first chord shape, lift the fourth finger off the string and rotate the third finger tip off the fifth string and lay it down flat on the second, third, and fourth strings.

Changing back is the opposite. Roll the third finger up so that the tip is back on the fifth string and drop the fourth finger back on to the fourth string. You don’t have to even move the second finger off the third string. Try it out.

This first article has showed you how you can play any major guitar chord by just knowing two chord shapes and the notes on the fifth and sixth strings of your guitar. There are other shapes but this should give you a good start.

We will take a look at minor chords in the next article.

G Minor Pentatonic Scale

Minor Pentatonic Scales Part 2 - G Pentatonic Minor Scale

If you've practiced playing the E Minor pentatonic scale in the previous lesson, Minor Pentatonic Scale, you should be starting to get familiar with it. What I'm going to do now is very quickly show you the G Minor pentatonic scale. I'll show you the tabs and fretboard diagrams for the five positions.

A Minor Pentatonic Scale

Minor Pentatonic Scales Part 3 - A Pentatonic Minor Scale

If you've been practising the E Minor and G Minor pentatonic scales from the previous lessons, you should know them quite well now. I'm not going to show you all the scales, you should be able to work them out for yourself now. What I am going to do is quickly show you the tabs and fretboard diagrams for the A Minor pentatonic scale.

Guitar Tabs For Beginners

How To Read Guitar Tablature

Guitar tablature was created for guitarists as an easier method than standard notation to read music. It's easy to learn guitar tab. Each string is represented by a horizontal line and a number on a line is the fret number being played. Guitar tabs can be used as an alternative to neck diagrams to display chords and scales as well as notes.

There isn't a recognised standard for the symbols used, but there are common ones in use. The most simplest type of tab is the ASCII tab. This is just a text file created from typing characters on the keyboard. Hyphens are used to represent the strings and numbers the frets played.

This is how an E major chord would look using ASCII tab:

e |-----0------|
B |-----0------|
G |-----1------|
D |-----2------|
A |-----2------|
E |-----0------|

The top line is the first string, high E string. The next line down is the second string, B string, and so on down to the sixth string, low E string, at the bottom. The first, second, and sixth strings are played open. The third string is played at the first fret. The fourth and fifth strings are played at the second fret. Because the numbers are in a vertical line, the notes are all played at the same time. The chord name can be written above it.

And this is a G minor pentatonic scale:

e |----------------|----------------|--------3---6---|
B |----------------|----------------|3---6-----------|
G |----------------|--------3---5---|----------------|
D |----------------|3---5-----------|----------------|
A |--------3---5---|----------------|----------------|
E |3---6-----------|----------------|----------------|

The principle here is the same. Each note played is indicated by a number, the fret, on each string. Here, the numbers don't form a vertical line so they are played one at a time.

Here are some common symbols used:

• h - hammer on - 6h8 - the string is played at the sixth fret and then a finger is hammered on at the eighth fret
• p - pull off - 8p6 - the string is first played at the eighth fret and the finger is pulled off to the sixth fret
• b - bend - 6b8 - the string is played at the sixth fret and bent up to the note at the eighth fret
• r - release bend - 8r6 - the string is bent at the sixth fret up to the eighth fret, played, and then released
• / - slide up 6/8 - the string is played at the sixth fret and then the finger slides up to the eighth fret
• \ - slide down - 8\6 - the string is played at the eighth fret and the finger slides down to the sixth fret
• v or ~ - vibrato - 8v or 8~

Here's a short lick demonstrating some of those symbols:

e |--------------------------------------------------10---------------|
B |-----10-12b14r12-10h12------------7--------10b12------12r10--8h10v-|
G |7/11--------------------11v--7h9-----7-----------------------------|
D |----------------------------------------8--------------------------|
A |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
E |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

The problem with this type of tab is that there isn't any sense of timing or rhythm. If you don't know what song the tab is for, you don't know how long the notes last. This is rectified in the next type of tablature we look at.