Acoustic Guitar Player

In this guitar tutorial I cover Chord triads using 7th chords.

Have you ever found that when you are playing guitar that your chords sound a bit BIG and that you’d like to create a bit more space for the other players? Here’s a great solution.

I learnt a lot of things from the great Jazz Guitar Player Ike Isaacs when he lived in Sydney.  One thing that he taught me was how to play triads.  His reasoning was that they were more mobile and it was easier to move a three note chord.  I find them very useful for playing fingerstyle accompaniment and it’s really easy to add a few extra bass notes here and there to make it even more interesting.  On a semi acoustic guitar like a Gibson ES 175 they can sound gorgeous. These day I play an Ibanez 105N and they sound just as sweet.

 This exercise is based totally on seventh chords, working through the cycle of fifths ( in reverse) , as soon as you start ataying it your ears will tell you where it is going.  I’ve started it  up on the 12th fret at E7.  You may like to start at bar four of the exercise just to get used to it, and when you are ready then move up to the twelfh and work your way down.

 The pattern goes E7, A7, D7, G7, C7, F7, Bb7, Eb7, Ab7, Db7, Gb7, B7.

 The fingering I use is fingers 1, 2 and 4 on the first chord then 2, 3, 4 on the next one etc

You will notice I’ve left out one of the chord notes in every chord, the 5th, but note how the seventh chord still retains its basic sound.

For the Printable downloadable version click Using seventh Triads for guitar chord playing