Chord Notes & Neck Charts

[dirkji]

This thread is for questions and discussion about John Hanna's chord charts:

Guitar Notes Relationships on the Fretboard | Chord Components Chart

[guelda]

Two thumbs up, very clever idea !

One way to use it could be to print several of them and use color pencils to visualize different inversions for the same chord.

Thanks John !

[Banksia]

I don't think I've ever seen one of those fretboard diagrams before. Very good idea. Probably looks a bit overwhelming but if you just work on, say four frets at a time you should build up a huge chord library.

[m78w]

Very cool!

MW

[Dennoow]

Very clever! It shows you where the intervals are in a glimpse!

[fast1]

nice!

[carlosc]

The fretboard chart was the one I learned to build up chords some years ago.
That time I had to write it on the paper lol. It was also a usefull study for intervals.

The color pencils stuff made me remember a Scott Henderson book.
He prints chord diagrams with many colours and each color is related to an interval, something like that I think.

Very good idea posting this stuff.

[JazzFlute]

This diagram is a better produced variation of something I sent to Dirk way back in December 2007 in response to an article in the Gazette titled "Jazz Guitar Chords". I never got a reply which is probably because I just emailed gazette@jazzguitar.be, no doubt a mailbox that receives a lot of messages and not a problem to me. Interestingly I, too, expressed my surprise at not having seen such a relative diagram published before.

Unlike mine, this diagram puts a label on every fret of every string giving a more complete but more cluttered picture in which the shapes get a bit lost. I should like to see 2 replaced with 9 and 4 with 11 in the diagram leaving only 6th = 13th to the user because I think these extensions crop up more frequently. Also perhaps some change in weight (or size) or colour to distinguish the really important chord tones from those that are less frequently occuring.

But it's great to see another approach to the "relative fretboard" and I shall definitely print off this version and use it alongside my own to see how I get on with it. Keep up the good work!

[ernie]

Hey great material, Thanks!

[wizard3739]

This is a very good lesson

wiz

[budhale]

very interesting tool.....thanks for putting it up....I am fairly new to jazz guitar and this is helpful to me....thanks to all the experts on here for all of your tips and good advice...........bud

[marshall]

Thank you for a wounderful aide.I'm trying to put the pieces of the music puzzel together and this is a great help.Well Done!

[mylkoa]

Thanks for the chart! Can anyone suggest exercises that can apply the information (besides learning tunes)?
Cheers,
Andrew

[aikigakusai]

First I just wanted to say I'm glad I found this forum. I'm getting some good information from everyone here - and new found direction in my studies (it's fascinating after 30 years of playing there always more details that keep me interesting in learning).

Great job on the charts. They work well together and timing of the posting was perfect for me. I've been thinking allot about this lately. I'll be placing these above my music stand and refer to them often. Definitely something everyone should have (but I wouldn't hand to the beginner - it would be information over-load). This is just like a chemist have the periodic table for reference!

Thanks - Tom

[123billp]

Everyone is different, and I'm sure the chart approach is useful for some people.
However, I have found that for me, it was more useful to learn the fingerboard through practising scales and playing tunes, and then learn the chord formulas. For example (simplest examples), 1,3,5 for major and 1,b3,5 for minor etc.
Once I had that down, I threw away the chord charts altogether and concentrated on voicing my chords to suit the situation. Over time I have gradually built up my chord vocabulary.
I also think that it is most important to memorize the sounds of the different chord types.
Anyway, that's just how things have worked for me.

[radisson]

really good lesson john on chords indeed

[TieDyedDevil]

Very handy indeed. I made one of these for myself several years ago. I've found it very helpful.

Here's the original version of my chart, plus a set of slightly different views centered by root.

Fretboard Map (large)

Fretboard Map by String, plus Equal-Tempered Tuning

[yorg]

another great lesson,as was youre charts tiedyed devil.
cheers yorg

[anta]

Very good idea! Thanks a lot!

[philbert]

That's one of the most useful/useable tools I've ever seen! A real "Why didn't I think of that?" gift to gigging musicians. Many thanks!

[jih68]

Hi

Just wanted to say thanks for this excellent tool. I learned music at school on another instrument but have always played guitar by ear only - for over 25 yrs now. I have always struggeled with the theory of music as applied to the guitar and never really had the discipline to 'get it down' as far as guitar is concerned. But I find all of the lessons that Dirk sends out really helpful and I am slowly but surely putting the pieces together. This one is the best so far Dirk - it helps me to reverse engineer what I am playing by ear and fit that back into the theory which may be a bit back to front - but there you go. Sincere thanks for this one Dirk. Greatly appreciated.

[ibo765]

Feel free to treat me like a 5 year old. How do I use the diagram to construct chords? The diagram is confusing to me.

Please provide an example.

Guitar Notes Relationships on the Fretboard | Chord Components Chart

[jonhana]

Hi,

May I thank you all for your positive feedback. These charts have only been made available on this site for 24 hours and I'm delighted that people are already finding them useful, or at least that they've stimulated some interest. I sent my charts to Dirk because I wanted to give something back to his excellent website.

I learned my guitar stuff on my own over the years. I didn't go by the 'official' route of learning scales and my knowledge of music theory was only picked up gradually as I went along. Once in a while, I'd have a Eureka moment when something else would suddenly become clear to me and my understanding of what I was doing moved up to a new level. Perhaps these charts will be of most use to other guitarists who, like myself, have taught themselves by less conventional methods.

I do envy young guitarists who are just starting out now, with all the information and tutorials available to them these days on great sites like jazzguitar.be. Nevertheless, I feel happy that I 'own' my personal style because I figured things out for myself. Music, and guitar, are such fascinating subjects that you never stop learning. Nobody knows it all!

Thanks again for your kind comments and support.

John Hanna

[RichardFrance]

This is a really useful diagram. Like many respondents, I had tried something similar - doing a diagram for each chord in a tune to aid improvisation: I suppose you could easily do that by printing off a few of these, and then using colour to show each of the arpeggios. It's particularly good for the chords such as m7flattened 5th, which you might want to find near the other chords you play.
I'm going through a bossa nova phase - which may be life-long, I can't tell! - so my advice as to how to learn this chart is to play some bossa - Jobim, Deodato etc. Their songs use a lot of 6ths, 9ths, 11ths etc and the reward is that when you find them, the tunes are so lovely you want to keep playing and playing them. So practice isn't so hard!
With the aid of the chart, you can find the little runs and tunes buried in a chord sequence, or bring out a bass line.
I've printed charts off to share with my teacher.
Thanks again. Keep up all the good work, all you forum contributors.

[jonhana]

Hi IBO765,

I'm sorry if these charts aren't clear to you. The guitar neck chart assumes that you know where to find notes on the fretboard. The example given with the chart was...

"For example, to find an Am7b5 chord, first find the Root note ‘A’ on the 6th, 5th or 4th string, and then look for b3, b5 and b7 on the higher strings".

To break this down, find the note A on the fretboard on strings 6, 5 or 4. That is now your Root, (R). Now, using the other chart, look for the structure of an m7b5 chord. This tells you that the other parts of this chord are b3, b5 and b7. Now look for these on the higher strings, close to your A root. Play these strings together and you have Am7b5.

I hope this helps,

John Hanna

[instasian]

This is a great idea, I can't wait to get home and see how well I can apply this! Thanks for putting this up!

Jeff

[GolanTrevize]

wow - really cool. I like it. just printed it out and laminated it - I suppose it will be the tool for the next weeks to play around.
Thanks for the work

[Brigb]

This fretboard mapout was brilliant - very usefull. It makes chord formation a lot easier to do. As someone who is just beginning to delve into intermediate theory, this really clears things up and will help me apply what theory knowledge I have to the guitar, which of course is very important. This not only helps with chords, but with scales as well. Thank you very much for this great idea.

[hotgoalie11565]

Very cool idea. Thanks!

[elinfoot]

Hi,
I just tryed right clicking on the chart to print it out but there was no option to print. Is there another way of getting a print out?
Great idea by the way