30-day guitar challenge, day 20: Master chords with wide voicings
Test your fingers with these stretched-out shapes
Fmaj7
30-day guitar challenge: This week's guitar chord challenge is mastering these finger-twisting variations on typical chords, and it's not for the faint-hearted!
The trick with these voicings is not to try putting a note on every string. You’ll be missing strings here and there, so they’re best played with your fingers.Here’s an Fmaj7.
Em7
Bit of a stretch, eh? This one should be a little bit easier. It’s the minor 7 equivalent of the same basic voicing.
D
Now, this one might be a bit more painful, but that’s because it’s from the encyclopaedic chord vocabulary of the mighty-handed Allan Holdsworth.
It’s a first-inversion D major, meaning that the 3rd (F#) is in the bass.
Am
We thought of making a minor version of that, but it didn’t sound very inspiring. Here’s a slightly different shape, which uses the same set of strings, but with the 5th in the bass (making it a second inversion).
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“A well-crafted sequence is successful wherever you may wish to use it”: Use these tried and tested chord progressions to build an engaging song
“Sometimes you don't want to be overtly happy or sad and a suspended chord strikes that perfect balance”: How to understand and use suspended chords effectively