How To Create Crisp, Clear, Professional Chords On The Guitar

Tired of playing the same dreary old chords on the guitar? Well, you are not on your own. Just about every home in the world has a guitar — or at least it seems that way. Some homes have two or more guitars to make up for the homes that don’t have any. With that many guitars buzzing away the all too familiar sound of the basic three chord song in the key of ‘G’ hardly grabs the listener’s ear these days.

But what if there was an easy way to create an endless array of crisp, clear professional-sounding chords on the guitar that would enhance your songwriting or group? The good news is there are many ways to add variety to tied old chords. Here is just one way you could approach modern rhythm guitar chord voicing.

Our diatonic music system is based on fifths. It’s the type of sound we have become conditioned to because it’s the natural progression we expect to hear in music. So why not incorporate fifths in our chords to create silky smooth chord progressions
that intrigue, tantalize and surprise the listener’s ear!

I’m not talking about the usual two note power chord which contains the root note and fifth. That sound can be heard everywhere. In fact that’s exactly the type of common sound we are intending to avoid.

Let’s start with a standard set of chords derived from the E major scale.

Quick review

The basic set of chords heard in popular music are created by stacking the notes of the diatonic scale in thirds on top of each other in layer cake fashion.

The key of E major produces the following set of three note chords (triads)…

E – F#m – G#m – A – B – C#m – D#dim – E

Most guitarists would probably play many of these chords using a bar chord formation and in many applications. While that would work fine our project today is to move away from these ‘correct’ but often heard and overplayed chord sounds.

Let’s take a closer look at the key of ‘E’ with the view of discovering the all important fifth interval.

The E major scale contains the notes:

E – F# – G# – A – B – C# – D# – E

Using the root note of E an interval of a fifth is created by measuring the musical distance between the other notes of the scale.

As you can see the note that is a fifth above the root note or keynote of E is the note ‘B’ (marked as [ ]).

[E] – F# – G# – A – [B] – C# – D# – E

Applying this concept to the guitar to develop interesting, original sounding chords is easy. Basically we want to have the two notes ‘E’ and ‘B’ present in each chord. As many players will already know, most chords produced from the diatonic E major scale will not naturally contain the notes E an B. The idea is to create new, fresh chord sounds by incorporating the interval of a fifth, thereby producing different types of chords e.g., sus 2, sus 4, minor seventh variations of the basic diatonic triads.

Sounds complicated? It isn’t.

Here’s one easy great sounding solution:

The first string open is an ‘E”, the second string open is a ‘B’ That’s our fifth interval covered already. Now all we have to do is convert or adapt the standard bar chord shapes to include these two open strings and the job is done.

We already have the two notes ‘E’ and ‘B’ present with the standard E shape chord so no changes here.

E
–0—-
–0—-
–1—-
–2—-
–2—-
–0—-

F#m (new version)

–0—-
–0—-
–2—-
–4—-
–4—-
–x—-

Notice how this chord has an different quality than the standard F#m bar chord. It’s not better, just different. Actually, the new F#m has a different name to help musicians identify its sound.

The new version of F#m is called F#m7add4.

F#m7add4
–0—-
–0—-
–2—-
–4—-
–4—-
–x—-

For the moment we’re not going to concern ourselves with all the technical names. Just think about the chord as a basic chord with added color or flavor in the same way as you could add milk, cream or sugar to a cup of coffee.

Here’s one more example for you to try:

G#m (new version)

–0—-
–0—-
–4—-
–6—-
–6—-
–x—-

If you have been playing guitar for a while and your guitar’s neck is quite narrow you may want to play a bass note with your thumb on the six string like this:

thumb indicated as [T]

F#m7add4
–0—-
–0—-
–2—-
–4—-
–4—-
-[T]—

G#m (new version)

–0—-
–0—-
–4—-
–6—-
–6—-
-[T]—

Including the bass note will result in a fuller sounding chord and is particularly useful when playing solo guitar.

Mike Hayes is a guitar teacher, author, performing musician and session guitarist with over 30 years of professional experience. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular FREE e-course.