Moving Open Guitar Chord Shapes Video Lecture | Guitar: Become a Pro (English) - Music

as civilized human beings we've
developed language of descriptions to
help us name and identify certain things
for example if you were to say handsome
guitar-playing guy you'd be talking
about me or maybe five or six other guys
now if you're to be more specific and
say Shawn Daniel handsome guitar playing
guy then we've really narrowed it down
haven't we unfortunately guitar chords
do not share the same principles in fact
if you were to say play the G chord 90%
of guitar players would just do
something like this one of the first
chord shapes that we learn one of the
easiest ones but really if we try to
move the shape around it doesn't really
work and it doesn't work because of
certain few reasons that we can't talk
about right now and how we can use
knowledge that you already innately know
in your head to turn this into a movable
shape all right so let's talk about why
it doesn't work as a movable shape if we
have these three fingers down right here
right middle finger on three pointer
finger to a ring finger or pinky
whatever on the bottom string three you
can think of it as three different notes
and any major or minor chord is always
going to be just three different notes
it's called a triad a three note chord
right now even though we're only holding
down three different notes we're playing
six strings and the thing you have to
remember is the open strings are helping
us out so even though playing one shape
will yield a certain result in one
position if you move that shapes
position you have to bring the open
strings with you so really quick we're
going to talk about the notes that
you're playing when you're playing just
a G major chord right so the first one
is a G the second one is a B and the
third one is a D now to fulfill the
triad of a G major chord we've already
been successful we don't need any more
notes the only reason we're adding more
strings is because it's easy to do so
and it's going to make a bigger sound so
we have a G a B a D another G another B
and another G in fact some voice things
you'll see for G major look like this
and all we're doing there is we're
taking a b and we're adding another d so
we have a very dish
as compared to one with more bees any
combination of G B and D is going to
give you a G major chord if you had a
guitar with 100 strings on them and you
had 100 bees one g and one D that's
still a G major chord doesn't matter how
many you have of each one it's just that
it exists and it's there right so we're
gonna start looking at an inversion
inversion in music is when you're
playing a chord but you're not playing
the root note first so the root note of
a G major chord right here is where your
middle finger is right so there's the G
that's what the the chord name is
responsible for right so a G then we
have a B and a DIA now we're going to
look at those three notes G B D as our
first chord movable shape that we can
use anywhere right so this like you've
ever heard of the Caged chord system a
lot of the principles in this are the
same thing but we're just going to focus
on one shape and see the inversions all
around the neck with just this specific
chord right so we have a three note
triad and we can move this anywhere now
this is going to be any kind of major
chord we just happened to have rooted it
on the G note here if we were to move it
down one we're gonna take that open
string with us make that D a D sharp and
it's going to look like
this you can use your pinkie to kind of
make it a little bit easier so that's
the G sharp major keep going
a major a sharp major B flat major B
major so on so forth now you have to
kind of be careful and not hit all six
strings you do it this way you just have
to hit the ones you're holding but that
is what it is allowing us to make a
movable shape and turn one shape into
twelve different chords because only
twelve notes in music so we're rooting
it on one of the twelve notes or we have
twelve different chords with one voicing
now the first inversion of this is
instead of having a G B D we're going to
have a be a D and a G so same grouping
notes were just starting on a different
one first and if we go back to the
regular G major shape there's the B open
D open G right so as long as you play
just the a D and g strings we get that
same chord now I can move this around
right all I have to do is remember that
now my root note is going to be whatever
the g string is so if I know that the
the fifth fret on the g string is a C I
can octave down fine to see you I can do
that same thing right here where I have
seven a five D five G I'm just taking a
little piece of that g chord and now I'm
moving it all over the place so that
would be the first inversion of that
right now if we go one beyond we can
just look at the same shape again but
now I'm just going to focus in on all
the open strings and this is probably
the easiest way like the easiest way to
play a G chord is just playing these
three strings D G and B right now I can
also move this one around in fact in a
major chord it's really just this
inversion now in a major chord you're
getting open strings too but we don't
need them we can just play the ones that
we're holding down and you go a a sharp
B C C sharp E over and over all right
and then
the last one we're gonna do we're going
to the bottom three string so now if you
look at this isn't going to be a little
bit interesting because if we just take
the bottom three we have a G a B and
another G so we don't have a D in this
one now you can kind of get away with
using this as a replacement for a major
chord but to really truly be a major
triad we need to have a D in there
somewhere - all right so now I'm just
getting the bottom four strings so if
you were to move this up a fret you'd
have to take all these with you to make
your G sharp all of these with you to
make a major a sharp major B major C
major so on and so forth so really we've
taken little chunks of this one chord
and turn them into the first voicing the
second voicing the third voicing and I
guess kind of the fourth voicing if you
want to look at it now why do we need to
know this one thing is really helpful in
is if you're into compositions and stuff
like that and maybe you want to like be
an acoustic singer/songwriter just
singer/songwriter in general when you're
writing a good kind of rule of thumb is
to keep the melody on top now what does
that mean having a melody like say
you're going to sing a note over a chord
and you want it to be a G right then you
want your voice to sit on top of the
melody so if you're going to sing this
note maybe you should play a voicing
that doesn't end with this note because
then you're going to be competing with
frequencies with the instrument in your
voice so knowing different voicings is a
good way to kind of make room for a
vocal or another guitar or another
instrument in general right if you have
like a two guitar attack like two people
in a band they're both playing guitar
and one person is playing an open G
chord you might want to find a different
voicing to kind of give it more of a
dynamic range and kind of fill the sonic
spectrum up a little bit so maybe one
person could be playing a G up here and
another person could be playing like a
higher G down here and it just kind of
adds a variance so everything doesn't
sound the same especially if you feel
like you're getting stuck with your own
songwriting compositions try using
different inversions from different
chords and it'll just really kind of
open up a lot of creativity and you're
just going to be mastering the fretboard
on the way to