We’ve previously looked at how to play chords all over the neck, but what about 7th chords?
7th chords come up pretty quickly in chord playing, because there’s a heap of really easy ones to play from open position, and sometimes they’re actually easier to play than regular major and minor chords!
Here’s a few of my favourites:
But finding the right one for each song once you get to higher positions can be a little more tricky, as you have a lot of notes to fit in, and not all of them are easy to transition to smoothly.
We’re going to show you what 7th chords are made of, how to split them into triads, which notes you can leave out and finally, which shapes to use to find and play 7th chords in every position on the fretboard - including a few shell voicings.
But first, we’re going to assume you’re already familiar with the method for finding regular major and minor chords, so if you’re not, have a quick read here to make sure you understand the basics.
The Difference Between 7th Chords and Basic Chords (Triads)
Our basic major and minor chords are all made up of 3 notes each - triads. 7th Chords are made up of 4 notes - the original 3 notes of a triad, plus the 7th note of the scale of their root note.
For example, a C Major Chord is made up of:
C - E - G which, if we describe them based on where those notes are in the C Major Scale, is
1 -3 -5
To make this into a C Major 7th, I add the 7th note of the C Major Scale to the chord, and get:
C - E - G - B
1 -3 - 5- 7
To make it a C Dominant 7th, just flatten the 7th and make it a Bb. There’s a similar approach for every type of 7th chord - it’s all just taking the basic triads, (Major, Minor, Diminished or Augmented) and adding some sort of 7th.
If you’re curious about other chord names or modifications, check out this guide to guitar chord names for an in-depth run down.
Playing 7th Chords: Method 1 - Stack or Modify Triads
If you already know your triads, you can stack two triads together to make any 7th chord.
Here’s one example:
A Major 7 has the notes
A - C# - E - F# (1 -3 - 5 -7 from the major scale)
The first triad, as you may have guessed, is an A Major triad - A - C# - E or 1 - 3 - 5.
But if we play C# - E - F#, we get a C#m chord too!
That means that you can play either one in place of an A Major 7th chord and it will fit, because those two chords combined makes an A Major 7 chord. Jumping between the two can give a great effect and give you a lot of options for both soloing and comping.
You can even keep doing this to find 9ths and 13ths - it’s just adding more triads, so for a really big chord like an A Major 13, you could play 5 different triads without hitting a wrong note!
However, if we only play one at a time, we haven’t actually played the full chord, so if do want to do that, we can one of the triads and then just add the missing note, like these two C Major 7th shapes:
The first is built from taking an E Minor triad and adding a C to it, whilst the second is taking a C Major triad and adding a B to it.
Note that while there are theoretically lots of options for playing these, in practice, there aren’t that many that are playable, so it won’t take you long to learn them if you already know your triads (including diminished and augmented Triads for everything other than Major and Minor 7th chords)!
So for this method, just find which shapes you can modify to play and go up and down the neck jumping between them all! Remember that you always add more notes, so it’s perfectly valid to still start with barre chord shapes like these rather than just playing 4 notes, as the only difference is we’ve double up one note:
These shapes are made up of stacked triads or added notes, depending on your perspective. Either approach is fine so use what comes to you naturally.
Playing 7th Chords: Method 2 - Learn Your Shell Voicings
You may find that the first method doesn’t give you all the nicest sounding (or easiest to play) shapes like you’ve seen in actual songs.
That’s because we often exclude one note to make 7th chords sound a little lighter and make it simpler to play - not just on guitar, but on all chordal instruments!
The note we exclude is our trusty power chord note, the 5th. If you have already learnt power chords up the neck, it should be pretty easy to identify them in a lot shapes already, but a quicker method is to learn a heap of “shell chord” voicings, which are 7th chords with the 5th removed.
They still sound great as the 5th doesn’t really give much harmonic content to our ears - it’s a bit of a thickener, which can be great for the power chords, but sometimes make our 7th chords a bit too muddy. You may actually find you prefer the sound of these shapes.
Some common examples of nice shell chords, which also show where the root, 3rd and 7th is located!
So Which Method is Better?
If you’re reading about this topic, and are able to understand and play most of it, you’re no doubt a pretty damn good guitarist! You know enough to choose which one’s best for you.
I’d honestly say either approach is fine as a starting point, so go with what sounds best or feels best to play. Long term, like with anything, I’d recommend trying both methods, but it definitely makes sense to master 4 note voicings OR shell voicings first to speed up the process.
7th chords are really nice sounding - use them more and get comfortable with all the extra possibilities this opens up in your playing (and composing!).
P.S. If you haven’t worked out why stepping stones are relevant to this post yet - it’s an extra reminder that all chords are just stacked 3rds, so if you want to keep stacking third shapes all along the fretboard, you have a sneaky bonus method for building not just 7th chords, but ALL chords. If you want an extra challenge, dive into that next yourself.