Autoplay Next video from Max length

How To Work Out Chords Pt3

913 views · Published 23 November 2015 · 11:58 · Indexed 25 October 2026

Channel: New Secret Guitar Teacher · 2015 · Music

If you would like to gain full access to all our Guitar Teaching Materials please visit the Secret Guitar Teacher Site and take a free tour: http://secretguitarteacher.com/youtube/ssb.php?lp_id=758

Here's the video transcript:

In the last lesson we started working out the chords to go with the arpeggios in this exercise and got as far as D before I left you to work out the rest for yourself. So, to recap - against the arpeggios round the series of fourths that sound like this we worked out the corresponding series of chords for E E Major, EM7, E7, E6 then A ...then D....

The next group of chords in this series are G...the fourth in the key of D. Then up to C...the fourth in the key of G...a little trickier this one ...we soon run out of space on this 2nd string, and we can't jump up an octave like we did with the E and A chords ...but we can trade in the fifth - the open G string here for the flatted seventh note Bb at fret three and this is how we arrive at this familiar C7 shape.

So that's C major, CM7, C7 ...and we can continue the same process on that G 3rd string for C6 however, you almost have to build the chord shape from scratch again to negotiate the fingering may help to think of C6 as an Am with a C as root.

Next is F where again the first couple of chords are no problem ...but for the dominant seventh we need to sacrifice the fifth - the note C on the 2nd string in this case and convert that to the flat 7th Eb which, we can reach with the pinky here ...at the same time we return the top F note here by moving the first finger over to fret 1 ...then for the major sixth it is simply a matter of taking the pinky down to D at fret 3 on the 2nd string here.

So I wonder if that matches what you worked out after the last lesson - do let me know if you cam up with alternative fingerings.

From thereon we need to resort to movable shapes so for Bb I tend to use the E string rooted shapes. This for Major - it's a four string version of the basic Barre chord but keeping the fifths string muted works particularly well for fingerstyle and we can then run this down to the Maj7 shape ...dominant 7 ... Maj6 shape.

Then for the Eb series, we move across to the A string as root and play the A major shape series.Major Maj7 Seventh Sixth although often I favour playing the first two chords in the series as A shapes, and then switching to C shapes for the dominant seventh and sixth...

We then carry on round our circle of fourths using the E string root for the Ab series then the A string root for the Db series back to E string for the F# series and finally the A string root again for the B series and we have then come full circle back to E.

So that concludes the explanation of both halves of this exercise. Actually a lot of the benefit from this comes from working out the chord shapes and relating them to the way the arpeggio patterns work and the way they sound.

To reinforce this, I have made a special backing track which is available to download free from the Secret Guitar Teacher site.

The track starts with a two bar count in. It's in 6/8 so count it as 1&a2&a...
then start by playing the arpeggios against me playing the chords on the backing track and this continues right round the circle of fourths...

After which it goes straight back the beginning of the whole sequence staring with E again, but this time we swap roles...on the track I play the arpeggios leaving it up to you to play the corresponding chords. So here we are at the end of the first circle with me playing the chords on the recording and you'll be playing the arpeggios ...F# ...B now get ready to swap... you play the chords from E ...EM7 E7...E6 up to A... and so on.

Loads of fun! Do let me know how you get on with that. In the next lesson we'll start looking at the corresponding Minor side to this exercise.

How To Work Out Chords Pt3

More from this channel