Playing Chords On Guitar - Slash Chords On Guitar

An essential type of chord to play on the guitar is what is called a slash chord. No, these are not chords played by the lead guitarist of Guns N’ Roses :)

Slash chords on guitar can look confusing and complicated in a chord progression, if you have not come across them before, however, not to worry, there is nothing to them.

Here is how a slash chord looks in a chord progression:

C/B

The way that you pronounce this chord is either “C slash B”, “C over B”, or “C with a B in the bass”.

C/B

The note to the left of the slash is always the actual chord you are playing. So in this case you are playing a C chord. 

C/B

The note you see to the right of the slash is the bass note. This is the lowest note you are playing in your chord. This is usually the root note, however with slash chords we replace this with another note, in this case it’s a B note. 

So you are playing a C chord with a B note in the bass.

That’s all there is to it. So when you see a slash chord now in a chord progression, just see it like this:

Chord / Bass Note

Here are some commonly used slash chords for you to play on your guitar. I will be using these chords in the examples for this lesson, so take a moment to familiarize yourself with them.

* I have highlighted the bass note (remember to the right of the slash) in red so that you can easily identify it.

** If you have trouble using your thumb (T) in the bass for both the D/F# and D7/F# chords, you can use your 1st finger instead and use your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers for the remaining notes of the chord.

Playing Slash Chords In Your Progressions

Slash chords are often used to make smooth transitions between chords in a progression. 

For example, instead of just playing a C - Am7  chord change on your guitar, you can instead play C - C/B - Am7 - C/B like below:

* With many slash chords, you will need to use the finger that is playing the bass note to also block out the string above it. In the example above, your 2nd finger is blocking or muting out the 4th string by lightly touching it as you play the C/B chord. This is why there is no note to play on that string in the tab.

The C/B chord acts as a stepping stone between the C and Am7 chords.

The reason why you get a smoother result by using slash chords, is because of the bass line that is created by the lowest notes in each chord of the progression.

The bass line we get from our slash chord progression above is this:

Here is another very commonly used slash chord progression:

In this case the G/F# is the stepping stone between the G and Em7 chords and the bass line that you get as a result is this:

Further Use Of Slash Chords In Your Progressions

Lets now really hear the difference that slash chords can make to your everyday chord progressions.

Have a listen to the chord progression below:

If you were to play these chords on your guitar as they are above, that would be fine. There is nothing wrong with this progression. However, if we were to make use of some slash chords then it could sound like this:

Can you hear the descending bass line that is created by using slash chords?

It’s much like the first two examples in this lesson, only the progression is longer. I have also purposely isolated the bass note of each chord by playing it separately. This helps emphasize the bass line throughout the progression.

Here is that bass line, on it’s own, just to make sure you know what I am talking about:

Slash chords are definitely worth including in your acoustic guitar playing. They are particularly useful if you are playing without a bass player, as the slash chords help create the bass line for you.

Experiment with the slash chords presented here in this lesson, and use them in progressions of your own.

As always, hearing and learning songs that use slash chords will go a long way to further help your understanding of them in your own guitar playing.

Here are some examples of songs that use slash chords that I will leave you with:

• Landslide - Fleetwood Mac (The progression throughout most the song uses slash chords)

• Taylor - Jack Johnson (The verse uses the C/B chord in a similar way to what we did in this lesson)

• Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin (Lots of examples including the intro and middle sections of the song)

• Tears In Heaven - Eric Clapton (Lots of examples throughout most of this song starting with the intro and the verse)

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