Want to learn your first chords?

Below are your open basic open major and minor chords - these are the chords to master first. Try using them in our acoustic songs pages.

We've also included some other open chords you might find useful.

The next step

Once you've mastered all your basic major and minor open chords these extended chords are the next step. These chords are perfect for adding a bit of colour to your chord progressions.

Where do these chords come from?

These chords come from the family of 7th chords. They have 4 notes in them so they are called extended chords as we are extending our basic major or minor triads.

We have:

major 7th chords - R maj3 Perfect 5th maj7

Dominant 7th chords - R maj3 Perfect 5th min7

Minor 7th chords - R min3 Perfect 5th min7