How Guitars Work

In lesson 8, we looked at the C shape on the fretboard, which can be used to play any major chord. In this lesson, you are going to build on this knowledge and learn how to: solo with the C shape if your root note is on the 5th string identify the C chord and the D chord within the C shape find the other interval notes within the major scale This is called the C shape pattern because if played in the first position, our root note (in the major scale) would be on the note C. But, remember, our root note could be any note on this fifth string. Because the root is on the fifth string, you're going to play it with our little finger. It's important that you do that when using this shape because the other notes you'll play are going to be to the left of it. So you need the other fingers on the left of our little finger available for play. At first, these full scale shapes can seem a bit intimidating, so let’s just take a moment to look at the C shape and review what we already k

We’re going to start looking at chord shapes in this lesson.  You'll learn how to: create and move the C shape play major chords with the C shape change major chords into minor chords with the C shape I explained in a previous lesson, that you should assign a shape name to particular patterns, rather than chord names. So think of this as the C shape, rather than the C chord. This is because a lot of guitarists get stuck on the idea that a specific shape is fixed to one particular chord. So for example, a lot of guitar players might see this shape, and think that’s how you play a C.  That’s correct, you can play a C this way, but you can also play a D, an E, an F, a G and so on, with this shape. When we play the C shape in the first position on the fretboard, we get the C chord. If we look at which individual notes are being played, we can see they they are all in the key of C. C (our root note),  E,  G (open string),  C,  E (open string) The G note, and the E note, are open. You do