Chord Patterns on the Guitar

The Guitar is commonly used to create melodies and riffs for songs, as well as to accompany with harmony.

Sometimes musicians play full chords, or arpeggios on them, as well as they move along the notes of a scale.

The DG Guitar Chord Patterns Android application facilitates the learning of chord patterns on this instrument, by displaying all the notes and intervals in a chord, on any position along the fretboard.

To produce notes of a chord, you must play only notes from the chord.

For example, say you want to produce notes for the E aug chord.

The E aug chord is based on the following notes: E, G#, B# (C).

Suppose you want to play this chord starting from the 7th fret of the instrument, and onwards.

• 1st string is E, part of the chord, and also is C on the 8th fret;
• 2nd string is B, not on the chord, but G# on the 9th fret is;
• 3rd string is G, not on the chord, but E on the 9th fret is;
• 4th string is D, not on the chord, but C on the 10th fret is;
• 5th string is A, not on the chord, but E on the 7th is;
• 6th string is E, on the chord, and also C on the 8th fret.

The following image shows this chord pattern from the 7th fret onwards:

Next, you need to know the intervals, to be able to tell which is the root, and its relationship to the other notes in the chord.

By tapping on the fretboard of the DG Guitar Chord Patterns Android application, it reveals the note intervals, as shown below:

This way you know that: the root (R) appears in 4 places, the third (M3) appears in 1 place, and the augmented fifth (a5) in 3 places.

So there are a few ways you can build this chord.

Next, you have to decide how to combine the dots such that you form a chord with the R, M3, and, a5 intervals.

Because there are six strings, there is scope for some redundancy (repeated notes).

Here are some fingering possibilities:

Which one you choose, depends on the proximity to the melody you are playing, on the sound, on the proximity to the previous and the next chords, and on how comfortable your fingers feel on those positions.

And remember that you can explore more by using the "<<" and ">>" arrows, to display intervals in lower or higher frets.

As you have seen, by understanding the intervals behind the chord formulas, this application will help you build many chords on your Guitar.

A key point to remember: it does not teach you how to do chords by memory, it teaches you how to deduce them.