The Complete Guitar Chord Masterclass - Intermediate Chords

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Jacob Lamb. Welcome to the Complete Guitar Chord Masterclass, course number two for intermediate chords. Now, in the previous course, we covered what a chord is and basic chords shapes. So that's all that you need to know for this course. This course is for those who want more than just the basic chords. And to take their playing to the next level. We're going to go ahead and cover building Chords out of a scale. Intermediate chord shapes like sus chords, slash Chords and seventh chords, as well as some Fingerpicking and inversions, which is playing chords all over the, leading us into complete mastery over chords and the fretboard. By the end of this course, you should be able to make some good creative decisions that help you to find your own sound on the Guitar. I'm really looking forward to jumping in together. So let's begin 2. Tones in a Chord: Welcome to the first official lesson in this course. Now, before we get into the actual intermediate shapes, let's dive a little deep to see how chords are actually made and what notes they're made of. We know that Chords need to be at least three or more notes that were playing at the same time. But what are those three notes? Well, if we start from a root node and lay out all of the letters in front of us. We can find them pretty easily. For example, in a G chord, we know we start with a G note. So let's lay out our letter starting from G and ending with G. To find notes in a G chord, we're counting every other number, 13.5. So that would give us G, B, and D. This means that on any instrument, when we play those three notes together, we get a G chord. And again, if we look at the notes in a G chord, we get G, B, D, and then G and G. So some of the notes are repeated, but we know we have those three notes for sure included. This gives us a pretty easy way to find our Chords all over the neck. Anywhere on the neck that we play those three letters. We've got a chord in that opens up a lot of possibilities for us. The problem is, we've got both major and minor chords. So to be able to do this effectively for both of them, we need to learn a major and minor shape. Now, what I mean by that is there's a specific major shape and minor shape that we're going to pull Chords out of. These shapes are called a mode. So we've got a major mode. And when we play 13.5 from the major mode, we've got a Major Chord. We've also got a Minor mode. And when we play 13.5 from the minor mode, we've got a Minor Chord. Now, this might sound a little bit confusing, but it's actually very simple once we start it together. So let's look at each of these, starting with the major 3. Building a Major Chord: Let's start with a Major Shapes. Now, we use half-steps and whole-steps to put this shape together. And then no matter what note we start from, we know that we can pull a Major Chord out of the shape. So we have a rule and we make our notes fit that rule. The rule is whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. This is exactly the same as building a Key, building a Major key. So when we take that from a G and we follow the holes and halfs, we see that everything fits really well, except our F. E to F is not a whole step, but according to our rule it needs to be. So we distanced the F a little bit by making it sharp. Then F sharp to G is a half-step. So when we're playing this shape from a G in its perfect form, we're playing gene may mean C, D, E, F sharp, and G. And we realized that 13.5 are the three notes of R G chord, G been a dean. Let's try that from a different note. What if I want to find the three notes for an E chord? Well again, I'm going to lay out my letters E through E, and then I'll make them follow this rule. E to F is not a whole step, but it needs to be. So again, I'm going to make F sharp. F sharp to G is not a whole step, but it needs to be. I'm going to make G-sharp as well. And now F-sharp to G sharp is a whole step. G-sharp to a is a half-step. So when we lay these all out, we see that our key of E when following the rule, has got four sharps. So we're playing E, F-sharp, G-sharp, B, C-sharp, D-sharp, back to E. That means that the three notes we need to make an E chord are E, G-sharp, B. Now, we want to know intermediate chords. We want to know the Shapes and we want to use them. So why is this important? Well, it's one thing to learn the science of a chord, right Here's the shape and then go and use it. But it's another thing entirely to know how a chord works. And that's what's going to separate you from other musicians. When you know how a chord works, then you can apply it in some really creative ways. So now let's go and take a look at the same idea. But for a Minor Shapes 4. Building a Minor Chord: So how would this work for Minor Chords? Well, it's exactly the same idea, except we're changing the order that are half and our whole-steps come in. Now, our order is whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole. When we play these notes, we've got a very somber, sad sounding mode to borrow notes from. And no surprise when we borrow notes from a sad sounding mode, we get a sad sounding chord. So to compare and contrast, let me play starting from a G in a major mode and from a Minor mode. So from my major mode, I get the notes for a happy G, and from a Minor mode, I get the notes for a sad G. So let's take it from that G. G to a is perfect. A to B is not a half-step and this is new to us. How do we shorten the distance while we shorten it by making it flat rather than sharp. So now we have G, a, B flat. We can carry it on to C, D, E flat, F, and back to a G. So remember this when we're building major modes to find this Major Chord out of, we're going to be using sharps to fit when we're building a Minor Shapes to borrow minor chords from will be using flats to make it fit. So now I can see that 13.5 to make a G minor Chord, R, G, B flat, D. Again, if I want it to be a Major Chord, it's G, B, and D 5. The Important Third: We just realized something really important. We learned that the difference between a Major and a Minor Chord was the three. See in a Major Chord, we had our regular three. In a Minor Chord, we had a flat three. The reason that's so important is because that works for every chord we do not just a G. So if you're playing a Major Chord and you want it to be Minor, all you need to do is know where the three is and bring it down by one fret and your chord will magically become minor. We saw this as well when we're learning something like the D chord, we have a D and a D minor. So where do you think the three is? It's on the first String, moving back and forth from F sharp to F major. And minor, that one note difference. Same thing with an, a Major minor. It's the one note difference. And so your three is on the second String 6. Finding the Thirds: Now let's focus in on a Major third. And the reason we're doing this is because a chord is made up of two third Intervals. So on the left side of the chord between the first and the third, you've got a third interval on the right side of the chord between the third and the fifth, you've got a third interval. Now, these are a blend of major and minor. So let's quickly look at each of these types of Thirds and then how we can use them to build a chord or find it all over our neck. A third interval is the first and third shape of our mode. We know that now, but it is also four frets away. If you start from a note and you've got 1234 frets, That's your first, third, or first, and third. So you can think about it either as from the shape or four frets away. 7. Major Chord Intervals: All of this groundwork is really helpful for the shapes that we're about to learn throughout this whole course. But we just learned about major thirds and minor thirds. So let's see if we can use them to build a chord. If I want to build a Major Chord, I know that I can play 13.5 out of a Major Shapes. But knowing the distance, the intervals between those notes can be really useful, finding chords all over the neck of my guitar. So here's how we build a Major Chord. We've got 13.5 laid out. That's 13.5 from the shape, 1-310 times out of ten for a Major Chord, we need a major third interval. That means if I'm playing a C chord and my root is, see, well I need a Major third above C. That's for threats, which lands me on An E. Again, if I'm playing something like a B chord, well, I've got my one as B. And now I know I need a Major third to move up, which in this case would be an E flat, is four frets above, be on the second half of the major Chord. We've also got a third, but this time it's a minor third, which is a three fret distance. From the three to five, we've got a three fret gap, or a minor third. Let's go back to our example of a C chord. My first two notes, the distance is a major third, so I've got C and E. My second gap, my distance is a minor third, So from E, I'm working up three frets and I land on a G. So using the major third and minor third Intervals, I know that my three notes for a C chord are E and G, which we know already from the shape, or just knowing a C chord shape. And our notes. Let's try it for one more shape here. Maybe I want to play an E chord. So I know that my firstNode is an E, and I know I need a third interval, a major third interval. So jumping up four frets from E gets me G-sharp. Now I need a minor third interval, and jumping up from G-sharp gets me a B 8. Minor Chord Intervals: Now, let's do this for a Minor Chord. For a Major Chord, we had a major third interval as our base and a minor third interval on top. Now for a Minor Chord, those are actually flipped. We've got a minor third interval as our base and a Major third as the top, which sort of makes sense? Major Chord is founded on a Major third. Minor Chord is founded on a Minor Third. What that also means is that for a Major Chord, we need a four-foot gap and a three for at Gap. For a Minor Chord, we need a three fret gap and then a four fret gap. So let's put that into practice. Let's think about our C chord. When we were doing this as a major, it was CE and G, beautiful. Let's take a look at the Minor. We still start from a C, except now we're moving up by three frets, or a minor third interval, which ends up being E flat. Now from that E-flat, we've got a Major third interval, or four frets above, which is a G. So we see using the Intervals once again, that the difference between a Major Chord and a Minor Chord is the third. Using this information, we can find any chord we want to, anywhere on the neck, so long as we're comfortable with the notes. All of a sudden, we start thinking less about specific shapes. We need to know more about creative ways to reach the three notes or play around the three notes of a chord. Now, knowing how these modes work and how we pull 13.5 from the mode to make a chord is also really important because now we're going to add onto that and adapt that for all of our intermediate chords, Shapes 9. What Are Suspended Chords?: We're going to learn about a type of chord called a suspended chord. Now, a suspended chord is when we swap out the three in our chord. And we swap it out for either a two or a four. And we'll talk about what that looks like actually on the guitar. But here are the benefits of Suspended Chords. First of all, they give us a really interesting way to keep a Chord interesting or to end a progression. For example, let's say I had to stay on a D chord for a really long time. Very quickly, becomes boring. Well, I can use these suspended chords to make the same Chord sound really interesting with one little change. It's different. It keeps the same chord interesting. The other thing it can do is give us a nice way to end a chord progression. So D, a, C to G, back to D. But we threw in a little suspended chord there and it made the ending more interesting than just landing on D 10. Sus2 Chords: Now there are two types of Suspended Chords. If remove our three down to two, we've got a Suspended second or a sus to chord. If we move our three up to four, we've got a sus four suspended for chord. Now, here we're going to talk about the two first. So this would be written out like DCIS to. Now, what we do is we move our three down to the two. So let's think about our mode, again, laying out all of the letters for the major D mode. Now, instead of D, F sharp and a 13.5, we would play D, E, and a or 12.5. Now, the actual shape on the Guitar completely depends on the chord, but that's the theory about what we're doing. Whatever our mode is, whatever the notes are, we're taking the three and moving it to two. So let's look at a few examples. Find playing D. Well my F-sharp, my three is right here. So I would just take it off to make it an E, D, E and day. In the same way, if I'm looking at an a chord, I have to identify where my three is so I can lower it. So that would be right here on the second String. And to make that C-sharp a B, I would again take my finger off. And I've got an a cis to. One important thing to mention is major and minor chords. If I'm playing a Major Chord, I'm bringing it down from a three-to-two. I'm bringing it down by a whole step. Right? And we can think about that. If this distance here is a Major third, then when I go down to the two, I need to lower it by a whole step to get it there. If I'm playing a Minor Chord though, and I'm lowering the three to a to the three that I'm borrowing to make my chord is a little bit lower anyways. So to get it down to a two, I need to lower it less. So even though I'm going for the same note where that two is, I'm lowering it this time by a half-step. So let's use a as an example. If I'm playing and bringing it to an ACE us to, well, I'm taking this finger off to make C-sharp B. And that was a whole step down. If I'm playing in a Minor and I still want my sus to, I just have to lower by one fret to make it the ASIS, to kinda cool thing about sus chords is there is no major or minor. They fit for both. The changes. How far we have to move R3 to R2? 11. Sus4 Chords: Alright, so let's look at a sus four, right? It's the same exact idea, except instead of moving down to two, we're moving up to four. Will look at Major Chords and put our rule underneath. So to move 3-4, we need to move that note whenever the three is up by a half-step. So if I've got my D Again, I know this is my dean and my DCIS to to make it a Sus4. I'm going to take that three and I'm going to move it up by one fret or a half-step. So, well, I like to do is get my pinky down to grab the G. So I've got D, df2 and DCIS for now. All of those are good replacements for just a D chord. And so that means when I'm playing a D, I can use either of those sus variants to keep it interesting. Right? That's all D. Now, let's take a look with a, again, I need to find wherever my three is, which we know by now is on the second String. And instead of moving it down to two, I need to move it up by one. For. Now. In the last lesson, we just talked about how this is different with major and minor chords. It's the same here, right? If our minor three is just naturally lower than we would need to raise it up a little bit more to get to that for. So if I'm playing a Major Chord and I'm raising it to a Sus4. I'm moving my three up by a half-step. I'm playing a Minor Chord and raising that three to assess for, well now I'm moving it up by a whole step. Alright, so if I'm playing an, a Minor and I want to reach that D note for my Sus4, I would take my first fret on the second String and move it up by a whole step. 12. Slash Chords: Let's talk about one of my favorite kinds of chords, and that is a slash chord. Now, so far, we know chords as 13.5 or root, third and fifth. And we've always talked about how the first note of our chord is the same letter as the name of the chord. C chord starts on a, C, G chord starts on a, G, D chord starts on D. All of that. Well, slash Chords take that truth that we've hammered in and throws it out the window? No, it does change it. It does change it. Our route changes. So let's look at what a slash chord looks like. The way this would be pronounced is D over G. Would it means is we have a D chord, but over a G root node. So chord over root. What that looks like is we've got a D chord. Easy enough. Now we need to put it over a G, over a root. So we need to creatively find a way to play a G note underneath this chord as our lowest note. I mess with this a little bit. I take my middle finger and I reach it down to play a G. Another way you could do it to keep the F sharp in there is maybe use your thumb. We could get something like an a over C sharp. I would play an a chord. And now I need to get a C-sharp in there. So this is all creatively think of ways to reach the goal. The chord we're looking at is the goal. Would I do for this one specifically is lay my finger down bar the first finger, and then grab the C-sharp with my ring or pinky finger. And so this is a world where we can make some whole progressions just by changing the root node. Like I'll use the D as an example and play around a bit, just changing the root. Right? So these fingers up here, playing the, the bulk of the D chord, never moved. My route did just two different notes. These are slash Chords 13. The (b5) Chord: Let's talk about a type of chord called a flat five chord. And this is a great point to stop and recognize that as we grow these chords or grow the names of chords and they start to look really scary. Chords are really just telling us exactly what to play. You've got a root chord idea and then anything after it is just adjusting or changing, what that chord is doing. The flat five is a great example. Like if we play a C chord and then put this flat five afterwards. All it's really telling us to do is play a C chord with, you guessed it, a flat five instead of irregular ones. So we take whatever the five is and move it down by a half-step. Now, the question is, why would we want to do that? Because it doesn't necessarily sound great. This means we've got C, E, and G flat, which sounds not great. Something there doesn't sound quite right if we play the whole shape of the Chord. So why would we want to play this chord? Because when we put it together, it doesn't actually sound all that great. Well, when we're building a Key and turning those notes in a Key into a Chord. The flat five is actually really important. Let's put a Key on the screen. And you might remember going through this and using a rule of majors and minors, we add major, minor, minor, major, major minor, minor. Now, the reason that the flat five is so important is because it actually fits perfectly in the seventh position. When we play the seventh Chord, building a Key as just a regular minor chord, it's a little out of Key. Maybe you've noticed it sounds weird or doesn't fit as well as you think it should. Well, it's meant to be a Minor Chord with a flat five. And look at this. The reason is when we look at the notes in that chord, we get a flat five. We get a minor third and another minor third. That's not either of the major or minor interval Chord building things we looked at. And that's because it's a flat five chord. So it's a Minor Chord with a flat five. I think I've said that enough now. So this is why it's important, is because it's a chord that fits perfectly into the Key. And especially as we start learning seventh chords, we're going to see that flat five pop up. For now. All we need to know is not specifically a shape, but how to find the letters in that chord. Whatever letters of a chord you build, take your five and drop it by a friend. 14. Introduction to 7th Chords: If you've been diving into the world of intermediate chords, you've probably heard someone talk about seventh chords Major, seven, minor, seven Dominant seven. What are these? Well, you might be surprised, but seventh chords are actually really easy to understand. If we've got a mode here that we're pulling notes from to build a chord, we know now that we pull one, three and five. Now you'll see a pattern here of the odd numbers. Seventh chords are just extending that pattern. So it's one, three, five and seven. So instead of finding three unique notes for our chord, we're now looking for four unique notes. Now, just like regular chords, we've also got major and minor seventh chords and they all build on top of regular chords. That's important to remember, so we don't get overwhelmed. 15. Find a 7th Easily: Let's talk about a major seventh chord. We want to talk about both how it works and then the shape on the Guitar. Well, how it works is we take a Major Chord. For a Major seven, we take a Major Chord, and on top of it, we put a Major seven. Okay, great. What is a Major seven? And how do we find it? Well, remember that major shape. That's how we find a Major seven. This is where things start to connect. So we had our Intervals, 34567 if you skipped the interval lesson and this is confusing, now is a great time to go back and check it out. So finding that Major seven, that's the note that we want to start incorporating into our Chords. Let's talk about the actual shape. We need to learn this shape from the fifth string and from the sixth string. Now, just like power chords, just like bar chords, these are movable Shapes, which is super cool. It means that when we know the shape, we know the shape for good and can play it from any root node. 16. Major 7th Chords: So for a Major seven will start from the six string. And I'm going to use maybe a as an example. So that's fifth fret on the six string. Now I've got my first finger press down, and I'm actually going to skip over my fifth string, which is a little interesting, but I'm just going to touch it with my first finger, not press it down, but touch it so that when I pluck it with my pick, nothing really wrings out. It's kind of a dead String. So I've got my first finger press down on the fifth fret, a dead String. My ring finger is going to grab the six on the fourth string, and that immediately is my seven. I've got my one, my son. My pinky is going to come behind the seven and grab the sixth fret on the third String. That's my three. Now my middle finger is going to kinda tuck between everything and grab the fifth fret on the second String. So I've got this shape right here. That would be an a Major seven, or G, or B, C, D. It's just that movable shape. From the fifth string. It's the same idea, but a little bit of a different shape. So again, I'll start from the fifth fret. This time I'm going to take my ring finger and put it on the seventh fret of the fourth string. So I've got my route and my fifth. My middle finger will grab the six fret of the third String. That's my seven right there. Let's pause and take a look at the mode we're borrowing from right, 1234567 and back to one. And I'm playing 157. Very cool. So we start to see where that borrows from. Now, on top of those three notes, I'm going to take my pinky and grab the seventh fret of the second String. This would be a D major seven. And again, that shape movable anywhere. Back to the sixth string. 17. Minor 7th Chords: Now let's take a look at a Minor seven. It's the same exact idea for Major seven. We had a Major Chord and put a Major seven on top. For a Minor seven, we have a Minor Chord and we're putting a Minor seven on top. So again, if we use the shape, and I'll start from the fifth fret here. We know we need 135.7. So let's take a look at this shape, how we put that into a movable shape for the sixth string and the fifth string, just like last lesson, six String is actually really simple. Everything is on the same fret. So I'll use the fifth fret as my example. I'll take my first finger, put it down right there. Now with my other three fingers, I'm going to put them all on the same fifth fret. Going to do my middle finger on the fifth fret of the fourth string. My ring finger on the fifth fret of the third String. And my pinky on the fifth fret of the second String. That's that minor seven shape from the sixth string. Now let's check it out from the fifth string. This one's a little bit harder. I'll still use the fifth fret as my example. I'm going to take my first finger, put it on the fifth fret of the fifth string. My ring finger will go on the seventh fret of the fourth string. Now my first finger is going to bar down the fifth fret of the third String. So I'm holding it down to grab all the fifth fret now, and my middle finger will go on the sixth fret of the second String. Now, there's something to notice here. If we are using our pinky, we can play the minor bar chord. All we're doing is taking our pinky off to reach seven 18. Dominant 7 Chords: Now we've got a different kind of chord that we don't have in the basic chords. Basic chords we've got major and minor, and of course a little bit of that flat five shape. But now we've got something called a dominant seven. Now, the dominant seven is interesting. You've got a combination of major and minor. Here. We've got a Major Chord, right? There are three notes and they're sometimes called a triad. So we've got a Major triad at the beginning, 13.5. On top of it, we're putting a mismatched seven. We've got a Minor seven on top. So 135 and a flat seven, or a Minor seven. So let's think about that for a moment. Out of our shape, we've got 135 and then 7.5 step lower than where it would be. Let's look at this shape again for the sixth string and the fifth string starting from the fifth fret, I'm gonna put my first finger on the fifth fret of the sixth string. My middle finger will go on the fifth fret of the fourth string. My pinky is going to go on the sixth fret of the third String. And then my ring finger will go on the fifth fret of the second String. For the fifth string, I'm going to play the fifth fret with my first finger. Like usual. My ring finger will grab the seventh fret of the fourth string. Now, just like with the minor seven, I'm going to use my first finger to bar that fifth fret. But instead of minor, I'm going for major, so my pinky will grab the seventh fret of the second String. Another way to think about that is it's exactly like the major seven shape. But the middle finger is taken off 19. Minor 7 (b5): Now we've got two other types of seven Chords to cover. And then we'll talk about how these fit into a regular Key so we can start using them in songs. This seven is a minor seven, flat five. Now, we've already talked about the minor flat five chord. This is a minor seven flat five. So as you can imagine, we're playing a minor seven chord and then taking our five and making it flat. So let's take a Minor seven. I'll start from the fifth string. Now, I'm playing 157.3. So my five is where my third finger is. I just need to get it down by one fret. This isn't a super comfortable shape for my hand. So you can move your fingers however you need to. I prefer using all four fingers to play the shape 132.4. But this is a minor seven flat five Shapes 20. The Diminished Chord: We've got one more type of chord to talk about for the sevens, and it's a diminished seven. Now, Diminished, you can think about kind of everything being Diminished, squished together. The intervals between notes are the smallest they've ever been. We've got a Minor Chord with a flat five. So, so far we're looking at something like a minor seven flat five. But we're shrinking the interval even further by making our seven double flat. Now, that sounds crazy. Let's take a look at what it looks like on the guitar. I've got the minor seven flat five I was talking about from the fifth string. Now, my seven is right where my middle finger is. And I need to bring that down by one fret. So I've got my middle finger on the fifth fret. My ring finger on the sixth fret of the fourth string. My first finger on the fourth fret of the third String. That's that double flat seven. And then my pinky. On the sixth fret of the second String. The seventh Chord Diminished, carries a lot of tension with it, right? There's this discomfort, dissonance that comes with it. But remember in music, the more discomfort in dissonance and a certain part of a song, the more relief we get when it finally resolves. And so even though the chord might not sound beautiful in the right context as a passing chord, it can end up fitting really nice in a song. 21. 7th Chord Review: Let's do a quick review of the seven Chords because they were so many to remember, and we're going to relate them all to irregular Major seven. So if we're playing a Major seven, we've got 135.7. Beautiful. For playing a minor seven, we change the three and the seven. We play one, flat 35, flat seven. Okay, so there are two notes there. We lowered by a fret. If we play a dominant seven, we've got 13.5. Again with a flat seven. We play a minor seven flat five. We've got one, flat three and flat seven, and a flat five. And finally, if we play a diminished seven, we've got one flat three flat five, and this wild double flat seven. So those are all great to know, but let's talk about actually using them in a song. And how we can replace regular, normal chords with seven Chords? 22. Fitting 7ths into a Key: So how do we fit these seventh chord shapes into a Key? Well, on the very basic level, a great rule of thumb is if you're playing a Major Chord, you can replace it with a Major seven. If you're playing a Minor Chord, you can replace it with a Minor seven. But since there are so many types of sevens, that doesn't work ten times out of ten. So let's take a look at a Major key here, and we'll put that rule of majors and minors underneath. Major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, minor. You'll remember we number Chords 123,456.7. And then we have the ability to use Roman numerals to make chord progressions. So in the key of c1546 would be C, G, F, and a Minor. So how do seventh Chords fit onto something like this? Well, let's start with the most basic form. We'll replace our major chords with major seventh and our minor chords with minor seventh. But there are two changes to make seven Chords fit perfectly. In the fifth position, we're going to have a dominant seven chord. So G in the key of C would be a dominant seven. In the seventh position, we would have a minor seven with a flat five. Just like how in a Key without seven, we would have a Minor flat five. Now we have a minor seven flat five. So in the key of C, we would have C Major seven. D minor seven, E minor seven, F major seven. G, dominant seven, a minor seven. B minor seven flat five. Resolving back to C major seven. A little reminder here that we don't need to replace every single chord with a seventh. Sometimes they're just really nice to land on. So I can play a normal chord progression. When I'm done with it, it can be really nice to end on a seventh 23. Chromatic Motion: Now we've learned a bunch of types of Chords. Let's talk about a FUN trick that applies to all of them called chromatic motion. Now, chromatic Motion, or chromatic movement, is when we take a Key and we use the in-between notes that the key doesn't use sort of as stepping stones. So for example, between C and D, there is a C-sharp and it's out of the key, but we can use it to play over quickly and it adds almost a jazzy feel, but it's unique enough to wake your audience members up. For example, I'm playing, see, I'll use Major seven to minor seven. So I'm playing C Major seven, D minor seven. Now the chromatic Motion is from C. I'm going to go out of key and hit C Sharp, but I'm just moving that whole shape up before I hit the D minor seven. So without when you write so we're quickly passing over these in-between notes to make this sort of jazzy feel. It could also be used in blues, but it's a really cool effect. We don't just need to use it for chords. We could also use it for single notes when we're playing melodies or lead lines, you can do some really cool things with that as well. But this is a Chord course. So I won't go too far off track here, but this is chromatic Motion 24. Introduction to Fingerpicking: The next few videos are going to cover Fingerpicking, specifically what it is, and a few basic patterns that you can begin doing today. First of all, what is Fingerpicking? Well, Fingerpicking is a method that forgoes the PEC in our right hand and uses our thumb and fingers selectively on strings to make some really nice broken up chords. It's sort of like a strumming pattern. If each of your fingers was a pick. There's a terrible example for you. Now, Fingerpicking like strumming patterns, is going to use the beats in a song. For strumming patterns, we need to know how many beats a song is and how long each chord lasts for. So that we can come up with a good strumming pattern that fits what the song is doing. And it's no different for Fingerpicking. The big difference here is that will be using our thumb to pick down typically on the sixth, fifth, and fourth strings. And our other fingers to pick up typically on the first three strings. So for example, a D chord might sound something like this. And then you would shift for something like a C chord. We're going to look at some common Fingerpicking patterns over the next three videos. 25. Easy Fingerpicking Pattern: Our first Fingerpicking Pattern is the easiest of the three. All we're doing is breaking up a chord between the thumb and your first, second and third finger. We're going to take our first, second, and third finger, and they'll typically be on the fourth, third, and second String. So my first finger on my fourth String, my middle finger on my third String, and my ring finger on my second String. Now, my thumb is going to jump between the fifth and sixth string, depending on where my root node is. So if I'm playing a C chord, I might play the C with my thumb. And then the fourth, third, and second String. Just altogether, just back and forth like that. If I were to switch to something like a G chord, I'm going to keep most of my fingers on the strings they're on, but I'm going to change my thumb to where my root note is on the sixth string. Minor, E minor. Back to seeing. So everything is pretty much the same, just my root note jumping back and forth. For some chords like a D, everything's going to shift down. So my thumb is on the fourth string and my three fingers are on the third, second, and first String 26. Intermediate Fingerpicking Pattern: Pattern number two. It's similar in that our thumb is still staying with the root notes. Except now we're working our way back to the root. So we're playing the root note, second String, third String, forth String to the root node. So I'm using my second finger, my middle finger, thumb, second. First. So my thumb isn't just hitting the root. Now. Try to turn my hand a bit so you can better see what my fingers are doing. If I change to a G chord, I'll move my thumb to the root on the sixth string. Right? So we start low, we go high, and then we kinda work our way back down. It's almost like this flowing Pattern, 5234, 5234, 5234, 5234, or six to three root node and work our way back to Reno or her way name easy way 27. Advanced Fingerpicking Pattern: Pattern number three will be the most difficult of the three. This is what it sounds like. So let's talk step-by-step here about what's happening. I like to break this into two portions of three notes. Each. The first portion, I've got my thumb on the root node, will use a fifth string chord as an example like C. Thumb on the root node, thumb again on the fourth string. Now my middle finger will grab the second String coming up, and that's the first half of it, pretty easy. The next section, I'm using my first finger and my thumb and doing a little back-and-forth, my first finger will grab the third String. My thumb will grab the floor String. And then my first finger will grab the third String again. So I'm working. And then doing low, back and forth. Let me turn my hand again here. And everything stays exactly the same. If I do a six string chord like a G, except my thumb would just start on the sixth string. That's a quick overview of three Fingerpicking patterns, but there are as many Fingerpicking patterns as there are strumming patterns, if not more, because you can separate the strings differently. So you can also make your own again, just by knowing beats in a song and finding different combinations of strings that fit those beats. You can play one string at a time. You could play two strings are three strings at a time. Really, the only limitation is fitting inside a measure or a bar 28. Introduction to Inversions: We know most of the ways to play chords. We know open chords and bar chords and power chords and seventh chords. There's so many options. One thing we haven't talked about yet are these things called inversions. Now, inversions you can think As versions or something or inverting something. The concepts that we're learning with these is actually really meet the three notes in a Chord 13.5 can go in any order and still be the same chord. So for example, in a C chord, 13.5 is C, E, and G. So we've got seeing and G. Now, we could invert those to be something like E, G, C, that would be C or three-five and one, that's still a C chord. The only thing that matters when we're building chords is that we've got the same three notes, any order the notes come in, It's a C chord. Now, what that means is we can find different combinations of those three notes on different sets of strings, and these are called inversions. So as an example, maybe I have one set of strings. I can play a D chord. Another D chord, another D chord, working my way up the neck. Those are all D chords. So it gives us a lot of options to play chords close to where our hand already is. Over the next few lessons we're going to look at String Set 12.3, both major and minor. The reason we're stopping at number three is because these are the same shapes as String Set number four. If we know one, we know them both. Now, something really important is what we call these inversions, because we can't just say this is a D chord, this is a D chord. This is a D chord. We'd be right, but it gets really confusing really quickly. When notes are in order like 13.5, that's just called root position, right? That's the standard. Things are in order. If we take our one and we kind of leap frog it to the top, we've got 35.1. We've moved the bottom note up by one, and we call this first inversion. So three-five and one is first inversion. Our root note in this chord would be the three of whatever chord we're in. If we did that one more time, we take our three and we leap-frog it up. Well now we've got 51.3 and this would be called second inversion. Now again, if we did that a third time, we're right back to our root position. So we need to learn Shapes for root position, first inversion and second inversion 29. First String Set Major Shapes: So let's look at the major Inversions Shapes for our first set of strings. My first shape is going to be very familiar. It's a D chord shape. So I'm playing strings number 321. Now, in a D chord, I've got the notes D, F sharp, and a. What I'm playing right here is a, D and F sharp. That works out to be 51.3. So neat. Little hint here is that most of the open chords we know lower down are actually second inversion shapes. Of course, we put roots underneath them, but our shape here is a second inversion. Which means when we flip the notes around and come up to our next set of notes, we're playing a root position in the middle of the neck. And when we move up again, will have a first inversion. Kind of in the higher section, the octave double dots portion of the neck. So second inversion, root position, and first inversion. So we've got our second inversion, D right there. Now I'm going to take my lowest note and move it up by five frets, 12345. That'll be the starting point of my next chord. Here. I'm going to play the seventh fret, seventh fret, fifth fret. Or we could think of it as we've got an a on top, an F sharp in the middle. So a D on the bottom, you have sharpened a, that's our position. Now I'm going to take my lowest note and move it up by 41234. And I'm going to play the 11th fret, 10th fret, and 10th fret again, that is F sharp, a and D. Now, two things I want to point out here. First of all, you'll notice that we moved up by five frets and then four frets. And the reason I mentioned that is because that's pretty common. So keep that in mind as we do other String sets five. And then for, the other thing I want to mention is we're not just learning the shapes, but we're also learning the order of the numbers for each shape. The reason is, remember major to minor depends on the third, right? We're just making the three flat if we want our Chord to be minor. So for each of these Major Shapes, if we know them, we really know the Minor Shapes. We just need to move the three down by a step. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll talk about that next when we look at the Minor Shapes for now, a great way to practice is to just work your way down. And remember we're using D as an example, but they're all movable. We know that E is a step up from D. So I could slide this up and be playing an E in a D chord shape. And everything else follows as well. Five frets up would be E. Four frets up would also be E. So for each of these shapes, though we're using a chord as an example. They're all movable and slides. Just like seventh Chords, bar chords, anything, these are movable 30. First String Set Minor Shapes: So let's take a look at the Minor Shapes for the first set of strings. Now, like we just mentioned, all we need to know really is where the three is and then move that down by one frame. So let's take a look at our first shape. Here. The second inversion we had 51.3 are three is on the first String. So that needs to move down by one fret. We've got our second inversion Minor Shapes. All of a sudden it becomes clear why we have that change from D major, D minor, right? We're moving the food down, up at our next shape. Our three this time is on the second String, right? We've got 13.5 in a root position. So our three needs to move down right there. Now we've got 13.5 for a Minor Chord. Again, we come up to our Major Shapes as a first inversion that we just learned. And are three is on the third String. So we move it down by one. And that Minor Chord, first inversion, is all in the same fret. Something really cool and handy to notice is that the three changes strings every time it went from the first String to the second String to the third String. So these are our Minor Shapes, Inversions. Second root, first inversion 31. Second String Set Major Shapes: Let's take a look at our second String Set inversions. So now we're working on strings to 3.4. For our chord down here, we're starting with another familiar shape and that's an a chord. Now, like we mentioned before, all of our open Chords, most of our open chords are in second inversion positions. So this is actually a second inversion a, which means we've got 51.3. Now in the same way, we can move up by five frets starting from the root here, 12345. This time I'm going to play 76.5 as my friends. Now I've got a root position, 13.5 or a C-sharp, E, all in a row. Again, if I move up by four frets, 1234, I've got this shape on the 11th, ninth, and tenth for it. This is our first inversion, a 351. Come back up to the second inversion shape on top. It's the way I like to practice them. Come up and back down. 32. Second String Set Minor Shapes: Now let's look at the Minor Shapes for our second set of strings. The concept is exactly the same as when we did the first set of strings. We just need to identify where the third is and move it down by a fret. The cool thing is, the third moves. Each shape we do in the same way that they did on the first strings. Now, that's a loaded sentence. Let me say it one more time. The third of our inversion changes strings with each shape in the same exact way that it did on the first set of strings. So when we play our second inversion, are third, is on top or on the second String. So we'd move it down by one. Again. We see why we get an a an a minor because we're moving the third. If we slide up to this shape here, are Third is now in the middle of the shape or on the third String. So we're going to move it down by one. And on top in our first inversion, the third is the root of our shape, or the fourth string. So we'd move it down by one. So really rather than memorizing to Shapes for each position, you can just know the Major Shapes and where the third is or how to count the Inversions at the very least. So we've got second inversion, root position. First inversion 33. Third String Set Major Shapes: Let's look at our third set of strings for the Major Shapes. Remember too, as we go over these shapes, they're exactly the same as the fourth set of strings. So if we can do this for the third set of strings, we can do it for the fourth set of strings. So we're gonna start with this E shape. And as you may have guessed by now, this is second inversion 513, going to move by, yes, five frets. So 12345. And now I'm playing seventh fret, second fret and forth. For it, It's a little bit of a stretch, but this is root position right here, 13.5. Now again, I'm going to move up to the first inversion position, moving up by four frets, 1234. Then I'm going to play 119.9. So that's three-five. Or on the fourth set of strings 34. Third String Set Minor Shapes: Now let's go ahead and look at the third String Minor. And by now, you might know how to do it just like the first set of strings. And just like the second set of strings, the three changes strings, the third that we have to move in the same exact way. So we'll look at our second inversion. We've got 51.3. So three is what needs to change or what's now on the third String. And again, we see why we've got E major, E minor. From our next shape up. This is root position. So 135 are three is in the middle of the shape around the fourth string, so it needs to move down by one. Moving up to our first inversion. R3 now of course is the root, the bottom of the shape or playing 35.1. So it needs to move down by one right there. So we've got they're there. And of course it's the same shapes for the fourth set of strings. It's very somber by the time you hit the thickest strings with the Minor Shapes. 35. Horizontal Movement: Now, before we wrap up our section on Inversions, there's one thing I want to mention that really makes them useful. It's great to be able to hang on a chord and jump around up here. And maybe you can start soloing and you've just used a Chord to work your way around the neck. But it's also really useful to use horizontal Movement to play the shapes. So you'll notice we've got an a in root position right here. Well, I could work up a set of strings and use the notes that overlap. Look closely at this shape and this shape, and you'll see there's some overlap there. Overlap that could really only fit one shape on each set of strings. There's no other shape on the first set of strings that these two notes could fit. And no other shape on the second set of strings that these same two notes could fit. Well where that overlap happens, we're playing the same chord back and forth. So I've got an a and an a. I've also got an a here where we're the overlap happens or here where the overlap happens. So I can not only jump vertically around the neck playing the same chord, but also horizontally playing the same chord. And that changes the way that we play. Now that horizontal Movement we can take from each and every position. So if I'm playing my second inversion Shapes, I can find all overlap. If I'm playing my root position shapes, I can find all of the overlap. And if I'm playing my first inversion Shapes, then I can find all of the overlap. What that means is that we now have three different Inversions Shapes, and we can overlap those on four different string sets. Well, my goodness, that's 12 different places on the neck to play the same chord that my friends is Chord fluency 36. Final Project and Congratulations!: You made it to the end of this course. Congratulations. As a final project, we want to just share your learning progress so you can record yourself video or audio, practicing or using one of the techniques in this class. Or if you're a little recording shy, you can always write it out. What you found interesting, what you're struggling with, just share how you're doing with this material with us. I'm really looking forward to seeing it. If you have any questions or comments, you can always reach out to me directly at Jacob at Lamb lessons.com or you can visit me at Lamb lessons.com. I'm really looking forward to seeing you and hearing from you and Congratulations. Remember we've got one more. This is the Intermediate Chords course. So you can go and find the advanced Chords course, which is course number three of three in this series, will see you there