Chord Shapes Throughout

On guitar we often need to learn particular musical material in several shapes around the neck. Let us find out how this applies to chord shapes and in a relative way, how many note combinations are there to work out. We will take a look at harmonic pairs, and three through six note chords and discover what we need to put together. In standard tuning we have the following intervals: Strings 6-5 (E-A); Perfect 4th Strings 5-4 (A-D); Perfect 4th Strings 4-3 (D-G); Perfect 4th Strings 3-2 (G-B); Major 3rd Strings 2-1 (B-E); Perfect 4th Because these intervals are varied, chord shapes and harmonic pairs will take on different shapes depending on the string combinations. In particular, shapes will distort when using strings G-B because other than those strings, standard tuning is uniform. Beginning with harmonic pairs we will find that there are two combinations that we need to work out. Shapes that involve the G-B string combinations will have to be different to achieve the same musical note intervals. For example if we play notes C and E using strings five and four we will have a diagonal shape between the frets and strings. If we choose the same two notes using strings three and two, the shape will remain on the same fret. For three note combinations we will find that there are three combinations to work out. Strings three through one and four through two will have unique shapes. Strings five through three and six through four will have the same shapes although different from strings three through one and four through two. Four note combinations have three unique shapes. Here we have shapes on strings four through one, five through two, and six through three. Chords on strings four through one are often the most comfortable to play while chords on strings six through three are can often be challenging. Five and six note chords on guitar can be challenging to play unless we are doubling a pitch. With five note combinations we will find we have two combinations; strings five through one and strings six through two. Six note chords we are limited to one combination as we are limited to six strings. Spend a lot of time working out three and four note combinations on the guitar. There are very useful and practical. Take one unique musical sound and find how the shapes for that particular sound change depending on the string combination you are using.