Open 7th Chords

Dominant chords, also known as seventh chords, are awesome to play Blues guitar and many other styles!


View the full lesson at Open 7th Chords | JustinGuitar

What about F7? Is it not playable?

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Hi Andy welcome to the forum, in this lesson Justin is covering just the Open 7th chords for beginners. For F7 there are a couple of open shapes but I would suggest way beyond the scope of Beginner Grade 2. Hope that answer the question, others may add to what I have said,

From what I recall it makes its first appearance in the first intermediate lessons for the E Shaped barre chords.

Why not pop over here and tell us about yourself ?

https://community.justinguitar.com/t/new-here-introduce-yourself/1531/8

Cheers

Toby
:sunglasses:

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Hi there! There’s a little error on the E7 (alt) chord diagram. On the second string it appears the ‘o’ on top as if we had to play the open string, which is impossible as we have to add the 4th finger in the 3rd fret. :sweat_smile:

Not a big deal but just in case Justin wants to fix it.

Cheers

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Just the E7 shape with a barre on 1st Fret, no?

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Funny thing is, when i was learning that ‘exploring chords’ lesson couple weeks ago i discovered C7 accidenttaly and it sounded so good and i was like ‘did i just invented a new chord’.

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I have found the C7 chord to be the hardest for me to play quickly. My 3rd and 4th fingers tend to move together and sometimes I will hear popping in my fingers when I try to move the 4th finger down.

On the other hand, If you can play a D7 chord, then in my opinion it is not much harder to play the B7 chord. The B7 chord used to be difficult until I realized that I could just move the D7 chord fingers or shape over 2 strings (the 1 finger from the 2nd string to the 4th string in the first fret). Than all I have to do is place the 4th finger down.

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When I started playing the 12 bar blues progression in E, I realized that my comment above about playing the B7 chord had to be modified. I found that the change from E7 to B7 had to done differently. I wondered whether Justin had mentioned this and looked back at the Open 7th Chords video and at about the 9:40 point he talks about the changes from the E7 to B7 and the A7 to B7 chords. I had missed that entirely as well as the suggestion to do one minute changes for these two chord changes. For the benefit of others who may have overlooked this I am putting in a couple of pictures of the chord changes:

The chord change is different than what I described above. You just move the first finger over 1 string and place down fingers 3 and 4 to form the B7 chord.

This chord change is similar to what I had described in my first discussion above in that after you slide the 2 and 3 fingers, you form the D7 shape with the first finger and put down the 4th finger. Justin also mentions the A7 to B7 chord change at 4:12 in the Open 7th Chords video and shows why the 2 and 3 finger form of the A7 chord is better, since it makes it easier to change to the B7 chord.

Practicing these chord changes in a one minute change, especially the Perfect Chord Change makes the B7 chord seem easier.

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I’m glad to know you have found a way through it @SteveL_G99
B7 can be a beast of a chord for many.

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Re E7 Justin notes " Start with a regular E, lift-off Finger 3, and you’re there!" which sound easy and should unless you have fat fingers like me, and end up muting the low E string. Going to have to work out the best way for this.

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Check the inside, fleshy part of your palm against the neck. It might be there where you are touching.

@Stuartw You’re likely adjusting the position of the 2nd finger when you’re lifting off the third finger resulting in the 2nd finger muting the low E string.

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Justin says " the 6 essentials grips to play blues guitar ". Curious to know why this is and why you can’t play the open chord version of these chords to play blues.

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Because the flat 7th interval is what gives the blues it’s bluesy sound you can play it with open chords but it won’t sound the same kind of straight less bluesy

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The blues version doesn’t sound very good either at the moment. Speed of chord changes being the problem. More practice required.

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I’m struggling with the E7 alternate fingering the most - I find it really hard to get the 4th finger across anywhere close to the fret on the B-string when the first 3 fingers are in the standard E-chord shape. I get still get the note to sound OK by pressing hard enough, but wondering if there’s something wrong with my approach, as I’m not having any issues with any of the others e.g. C7. Any advice appreciated otherwise i’ll just keep trying to stretch and continue pressing harder.

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@saj78

E7 is formed by adding the note D to a regular E major chord.

You can do this by:

[a] lifting 3rd finger from am E major (adding the open D string)
[b] playing a regular E major and adding the note D at fret 3 of the 2nd string (this is what you are struggling with).
[c] playing version [a] and adding the note D at fret 3 of the 2nd string. A combination of [a] and [b] if you will. This could be your saviour while you struggle with [b].

I hope that helps.
Cheers :slight_smile: Richard

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Thanks Richard! I did actually try playing [c] as you described and it sounded ok but wasn’t sure if it was still a proper dominant 7 chord so its good to know its useable as an alternative.

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I’ve been practicing the A7 chord in two ways as shown in the lesson:
Version 1: two finger A7 (2nd fret 4th string + 2nd fret 2nd string)
Version 2: with the bar across 2nd fret strings 2,3,4 plus the G on the 3rd fret 1st string with the little finger.

Is it also possible to play it like version 1, but adding the little finger on 3rd fret 1st string to add another G. This sounds a bit more like version 2, but I find it a bit quicker to get to at the moment when doing changes between chords. Only difference i could see was playing a G on 3rd string instead of an A. Is this a valid way of playing when it suits or is it actually something other than an A7?

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Good deduction and use of chord knowledge.
They are all A7.
A chord is what a chord contains.

I hope that helps.

Cheers :smiley:

| Richard_close2u | JustinGuitar Official Guide, Approved Teacher & Moderator

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