Guitar Music Theory For Kids and Beginners - Part 6 - Moveable Chord Forms

Do you know all or most of your basic open position chords? Stop thinking of them as mere chords. Start thinking of them as movable chord forms -- Movable by the Chromatic Scale.

There are a whole bunch of open position chords, but let's talk about the 8 most basic ones: A, C, D, E, G, Am, Dm, and Em.

A [ 0 0 2 2 2 0 ]

C [ x 3 2 0 1 0 ]

D [ x 0 0 2 3 2 ]

E [ 0 2 2 1 0 0 ]

G [ 3 2 0 0 0 3 ]

Am [ 0 0 2 2 1 0 ]

Dm [ x 0 0 2 3 1 ]

Em [ 0 2 2 0 0 0 ]

Of these 8, let's single out 4 of them for special attention. The first thing to do is to change the fingering.

First, the A chord [ 0 0 2 2 2 0 ]. Play this by using your 3rd finger as a mini, or baby bar across the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strings instead of with your 1st 3 fingers. This frees up your 1st finger. Make sure that all of the notes are clear -- except don't worry too much about getting the 1st string clear. That's hard for all of us to do.

Second, the E chord [ 0 2 2 1 0 0 ].Play this chord with fingers 2, 3, and 4 instead of your 1st 3 fingers -- Again, freeing up your 1st finger.

Third, the Am chord [ 0 0 2 2 1 0 ]. Play with fingers 2, 3, and 4. You guessed it - It frees up your 1st finger.

Lastly, the Em chord [ 0 2 2 0 0 0 ]. Play with your 3rd and 4th fingers, thereby again, freeing up your 1st finger.

Why do I want to finger these chords this way making sure that the 1st finger is freed up? We're going to use the 1st finger to make a movable nut on the guitar.

Movable nut? What's that?

The nut on your guitar is that plastic or bone thing with grooves in it on the top of the neck where the strings flow over. If we were able to move the nut further up the net, we would raise the pitch of all of the notes. What we are going to do is to use the first finger to do just that.

But before we do, let's talk about the Chromatic Scale:

A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab A etc.->

This is a 1/2 step scale. In other words, the distance between each note is 1/2 step. Guess what? The frets on your guitar are also half steps, making the neck of your guitar a chromatic scale. Your strings are also chromatic scales starting from each string name. Not only that, but the relationship of each string to the other would be the same if you were able to move the nut up and down the neck of your guitar.

What this means is that all of the chords that you know in the open position are movable by the chromatic scale -- the starting point of each scale being the chord name.

For example, let's look at those 4 chords that we singled out - A, E, Am, and Em. Note that we freed up the 1st finger on each of these chords.

For the A chord, take that mini bar that you made with your 3rd finger and move it higher up the neck 1 fret (1/2 step). Now, because we moved the chord up 1 fret, we have to move the nut up 1 fret or 1/2 step. We do this by taking our newly freed up 1st finger, and creating a new nut by barring it across all 6 of the strings.

Your 1st finger will complain at first until you get used to it.

So what is this new chord called? Look at the Chromatic Scale and ask yourself what is 1/2 step above A. The answer is A#/Bb. Remember frets and 1/2 steps on your guitar are the same. If we moved this whole thing up one more fret (1/2 step) we would have a B chord. Move it again 1 fret up (1/2 step) gives us a C chord, etc.

Do the same thing with the other 3 chords (E, Am, and Em). Practice going up and down the neck and memorize these chords.

What about the other basic chords (C, D, G, Dm)? You could do this with these chords also as long as you changed your fingering to free up your 1st finger.

The truth, however, is that unless you happen to be a classical guitar player, you don't see it very often. For good reason -- It's very difficult. You may see it done with the C chord once in a while, but not the others.

For the D chord, merely move the chord up and down the neck as is. The only issue is that you now cannot play the last 3 strings. It is a 3 string chord only.

For the G chord, we will create a mini bar with the 1st finger over the 1st 4 strings only (instead of all 6). Use your 4th finger on the 1st string. The bottom 2 strings are not played.

The Dm chord is like the D chord -- It's a 3 note chord.

If you know other open position chords, these are also movable, though if there are any strings that shouldn't be played, you'll have to figure that out.

Suddenly all of your chords are now movable chord forms, dramatically increasing the number of chords that you know and the number of "crayons in your box". You can see that understanding and memorizing the Chromatic Scale is the key here.
James Emery Vigh is an independent film maker and author of guitar courses for kids and adults. His current project uses animation and live footage to teach the guitar to kids. For more information, please visit http://www.profbruno.com

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