How To Spice Up Your Rhythm Guitar Playing With Block Chords
by Simon Candy
In this video, I sit down with music theory expert Tommaso Zillio to discuss and demonstrate cool ways to play chords on guitar.
Both myself and Tommaso share ways we like to harmonise on guitar avoiding the all too common open and bar chords, that are important, yes, but very limiting if that is all you know to do when playing chords on the instrument.
Watch as Tommaso and I break down the block chord.
The block chord is a very useful chord type that can be played all over the fretboard in various ways as a major 7th, dominant 7th, and minor 7th chord.
In addition, you learn how to create a full and complete sound by applying fingerpicking and open strings to this chord type.
Watch the video below to learn more:
Major 7th Block Chords
The following are the E major 7th block chord shapes I cover in the video:
Dominant 7th Block Chords
By simply changing one note in each of the major 7th shapes above, we get the E dominant 7th block chord shapes:
Minor 7th Block Chords
By simply changing one note in each of the dominant 7th shapes above, we get the E minor 7th block chord shapes:
Block Chord Blues
The following is one possible way of applying block chords.
By using the drone of the low E and A open strings, we can create a full sound travis picking our way through a blues in E:
