Chords Archives - Page 8 of 14

Top 12 Favourite Sounding Guitar Chords

There are so many beautiful sounding chords you can play on the guitar. It’s one of the triggers that makes me want to grab my guitar daily. I love sitting in my comfty chair, strumming a couple of those chords, fiddling around with the sounds, adding or lifting some fingers here and there, and see where it takes me and how it evolves into a piece of music.

I couple of years ago I wrote a similar post on this topic 10 Ways to Play the Most Beautiful Open Chord Shapes, but today I want to share with you my personal top 12 favourite sounding chords. This top 12 does change from time to time, nevertheless these chords sound amazing, each in their own right.

You can use these chords to add some extra flavour, brilliance or spice to your songs. It’s also nice to end your song with a divine or dreamy chord as icing on the cake.

While strumming these chords, you also want to put effort in making them sound beautiful. Strum your strings delicately, elegantly and skillfully to hear the qualities and bright sparkling sounds of each chord.

Play them in arpeggiated style (down or up strumming, where the strings are played one at a time) or try them with a fingerstyle pattern. Play with them softly with the flesh of your fingers, the attack of your nails or a combination of both. Play them gently or firmly with a pick. Experiment, feel and listen with your ears.

Some of the chords shown here, might already be familiar to you like the G major chord, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a great sounding chord. It’s big, solid, flexible and sparkly. It’s a chord you can rely on.

Also, some chords just sound really great or even better when you play them with a capo on the first, second or third fret. Playing chords like an open C or G major chord a little higher up the neck with a capo, and it will make your guitar (preferably acoustic in this case) sound like a true angel.

The chords shown below are not particular beginner chords, so don’t get discouraged if you can’t play all of these right on the spot. Be persistent and keep practicing.

The E/A chord sounds really nice when you follow it up with an A major chord. Although all the chords sound just great on their own, the trick is to incorporate them into a nice chord progression and make some music with it.

Without further ado,
Enjoy!

So what is your favourite sounding chord? Please share in the comments. Write it down like 320033 (G major chord). I’d love to know.

Have a wonderful day!

How to Play and Use Power Chords

By Klaus Crow 4 Comments

The primal feelings that derive from strumming power chords on a guitar that’s plugged into a great sounding amp or distortion, is what makes you wanna play the instrument over and over again. Add a drummer and bass player on top of that experience and superb feelings of euphoria will unfold.

Power chords are indeed powerful and that’s why they are mainly used in rock music, metal or any type of music that consists of electric guitars and distortion. However during the 90s a lot of rock bands started shifting the power chords to the acoustic guitars due to the MTV’s unplugged series, which set the stage for a new area on the acoustic guitar.

The power chord is a fairly easy chord to play, especially on an electric guitar or when played higher up the neck. It’s a moveable chord shape, that can be played in every key just by moving it up and down the fretboard (explained later).

This is why a lot of guitar players love to play rock music. The use of just one chord shape moving around the guitar neck throughout the entire song makes playing rhythm guitar quite accessible for the eager rock beginners.

How to Play The Most Common Types of 6th Chords

By Klaus Crow 3 Comments

The 6th chord has a really nice flavor of it’s own. It’s probably not one of the first obvious chords you will learn when you start out, but the 6th chord is used in many popular songs and is a favorite in jazz music.

The chord is often used in intros or as a final chord at the end of a song, but also to add a breath of fresh air throughout a chord progression.

Today we will learn the most common types of 6th chord shapes:
– Open major 6th chords
– Minor 6th chords
– Moveable (closed) 6th chords

Let’s spice up your chord vocabulary and play a bit out of the box.

Enjoy the flavors!

OPEN MAJOR 6TH CHORDS

There is often confusion over the chord symbols 6 and Maj6, but these are interchangeable. So “C6” is the same as “Cmaj6”.

The 8 Second Most Important Guitar Chords For Beginners

By Klaus Crow 6 Comments

I noticed that a lot of beginner guitar players appreciate the easy step by step approach of learning new chords. That’s why I decided to chop things up a bit into a series of easy to follow chord posts, so you don’t get overwhelmed by the infinite amount of chords that are spread around the internet.

In one of the previous post I showed you The 8 Most Important Open Chords For Beginners. Today I show you “The Second 8 Most Important Chords For Beginners”. This way you can expand your chord vocabulary in the appropriate order that works best for learning new beginner songs and expanding your beginner path.

In Part I we learned the C, A, G, E, D, Dm, Am and Em chords. Today we learn the A7, B7, C7, D7, E7 and G7 chords. We call these dominant 7th chords (dom7). They are often used in pop music and essential chords in blues music. Also the F chord and Bm chord are a great follow up and common chords in every style of music.

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