GressusGuitar · Reference

How to Build a Chord on Guitar

Fig. 1 — the chord library

Every diagram in this book is one of this tool's cards. It is meant to live on a music stand, not to be read once.

Most guitarists learn chords as shapes: you are shown where the fingers go, you copy it, and after enough repetition your hand finds the position without being asked. It works — until someone writes B♭ø7 on a chart and there is no diagram underneath.

These pages take the instrument's own route. It starts with the chords the guitar hands you for nothing, uses one of them to explain what a chord type actually is, builds the two-note chord that rock was made from, and then shows how one finger laid across the strings turns a handful of shapes into all of them.

Where every note lives across the whole neck is a different subject with its own tool. Here we ask two things only: what is this chord made of, and what does it look like under the hand.

Open the whole chord library Practise free with Gressus

How to Build a Chord01

GressusThe library

Fig. 1 — the chord library

Full screen

Every diagram in this book is one of this tool's cards. It is meant to live on a music stand, not to be read once.

Practise free with Gressus

How to Build a Chord02

GressusFoundations

What a chord is

A chord is three or more notes sounded together. What makes it that particular chord is not which notes it contains in the abstract — it is the distances between them. A major chord on C and a major chord on B♭ share no notes at all, yet they are the same chord type, because the distances inside them are identical.

Chords are patterns of distance, not lists of notes.

Every chord is measured from its root — the note it is named after.

Counting in steps

One step is one fret, but only along a single string, and chords are not played along a single string. So the counting in this book happens on a ruler: twelve steps in a straight line, root to octave.

The ruler tells you what to play. The diagram tells you where. Keep those two jobs apart and the instrument gets a great deal simpler.

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GressusIntervals

The named distances

Each distance has a shorthand — R, ♭3, 5 — called the degree: what the interval is, relative to the root.

Table 1 · The intervals within one octave

Steps	Interval	Degree
0	Root (unison)	R
1	Minor second	♭2
2	Major second	2
3	Minor third	♭3
4	Major third	3
5	Perfect fourth	4
6	Tritone (dim fifth)	♭5
7	Perfect fifth	5
8	Minor sixth (aug fifth)	♯5
9	Major sixth	6
10	Minor seventh	♭7
11	Major seventh	7
12	Octave	R

The root is gold throughout. Of the rest, three do the work: the third decides major or minor, the fifth makes the chord stable, and the seventh gives it pull.

One degree is greyed out. The ♭2 is the only distance in the octave that appears in none of the twelve chord types in this book — every other one belongs to at least one of them. That is not the same as useless: it is everywhere as a passing note, and it does turn up in richer chords than these pages cover. It simply never forms part of a chord you would be asked to hold.

How to Build a Chord04

GressusOpen chords

What the guitar gives you free

Six strings, tuned E–A–D–G–B–E, ring on their own. Any chord whose notes happen to include some of those open strings can be held with two or three fingers and the rest left ringing.

These are the open chords, and they are the reason the guitar is famously easy to start. They are also an accident — nobody designed the tuning to make chords convenient, and the convenience it happens to offer is spread very unevenly.

Eight chords come almost free. Everything else has to be earned with a barre.

Those eight are the next two pages: five majors and three minors. They are worth learning as grips first and understanding second — the understanding arrives in the spread after, and it arrives more easily once your hands already know what a chord feels like.

There is no theory on the next two pages. Just the chords, and where your fingers go.

How to Build a Chord05

GressusOpen chords

The five open majors

Every major chord that standard tuning gives you for nothing. There are five, and no more.

C♯

G♯

F♯

C, A, G, E and D.

Those five letters spell CAGED — which is exactly where that system takes its name.

It is not a coincidence and it is not a mnemonic invented afterwards. They are simply the five major chords whose notes happen to fall on open strings, and the whole of guitar's first-position vocabulary is built on them.

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GressusOpen chords

The three open minors

And every minor chord that comes free. There are three.

Dm, Em and Am.

Notice which letters they are: D, E and A — three of the five majors, with one note moved. Em is E major with a single finger lifted. Am is A major with one finger moved back a fret. Dm is D major with the top note dropped one.

In each case that finger moves the same note: it takes the major third down one step to a minor third, and the chord goes from major to minor. It is the change most people describe as happy to sad, and it is one fret.

Eight open chords in total, and three of them are another one with a finger moved.

The next spread takes that one finger apart properly.

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GressusOpen chords

The landscape

Counting every chord type in the library that can be played open, the tuning's bias is stark.

Table 2 · Chord types available open, by root

Root	Types	Which
A	12	every type but dim7
D	12	every type but dim
E	11	every type but sus2 and dim7
G	5	maj aug 6 7 maj7
C	5	maj min aug sus4 maj7
B, F, D♭, A♭	1–6	odd shapes, mostly sevenths, diminished and augmented

A, D and E between them account for thirty-five of the fifty-nine open shapes on the instrument.

That is why so much guitar music sits in A, D, E and G — and why C is a poor place to learn chord types, giving you a major, a minor, a sus4, an augmented and a major seventh and nothing else. These pages stay in A and D while the chords are open, and move to F and B♭ once they are not.

How to Build a Chord08

GressusFlavour chords

Major, Minor and Suspended

D is the clearest teacher on the instrument. Hold the D shape, then move the note on the thinnest string — only that one — and you pass through four different chord types without the rest of your hand moving at all.

Fig. 2 — the D family

F♯

Dsus2, Dm, D, Dsus4. Every one is x x 0 2 3 —; only the last number changes, from open to 1, 2 and 3.

One string, four frets, four chord types. This is the whole of chord quality in a single grip.

Play them in that order and you can hear the note climbing: it passes the second, the minor third, the major third and the fourth — and each one gives the chord a different name.

D makes this visible, because the other two notes never move. But it is not a peculiarity of D. The same four alterations sit inside every chord you will ever play; on most shapes they are spread across the hand and much harder to see. The next page takes them one at a time.

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GressusFlavour chords

One at a time

The same four chords on the ruler, rooted on D. The note you moved is the third — the one that decides everything — and the root and fifth never move, which is why the chord stays a D throughout. The gold cell is the root; the coloured cells are the notes you are holding.

Dsus2 — the third replaced from below

Dm — the third lowered one step

D — the third as written

Dsus4 — the third replaced from above

Major and minor differ by that one step and nothing else. Suspended chords do something stranger — they take the third out and put a neighbour in its place, so nothing in the chord decides major or minor at all, and the ear waits for something that has not arrived.

It rarely waits long. A sus chord nearly always resolves onto the stable chord underneath it: the third arrives, and what was unsettled becomes plainly major or minor. On this grip the resolution is the movement you have just made — Dsus4 falling back to D is one finger dropping a fret, and Dsus2 rising to D is the same finger going the other way.

That is the whole triad vocabulary bar two, and it explains the open minors two pages back: Em, Am and Dm are their majors with the third pulled down a fret. One finger, every time.

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GressusFlavour chords

The sevenths that come free

Add a fourth note to a triad and you get a seventh chord — usually at the cost of another finger. In the open keys it is often cheaper than that, because the note you need is already ringing on an open string.

C♯

F♯

G♯

C♯

G♯

A7, D7, E7 — then Am7, Em7 and Amaj7. A7 and Am7 take fewer fingers than the plain chords they come from.

Sixteen seventh chords can be played open: A7, D7, E7, G7 and B7; Am7, Bm7, Dm7 and Em7; Amaj7, Bmaj7, Dmaj7, Emaj7, Fmaj7, Gmaj7 and Cmaj7.

What each one means comes later, on the chord-by-chord pages. For now the useful fact is that in these keys, a seventh is often a finger lifted rather than a finger added — which is why blues and folk sit here.

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GressusFlavour chords

The rest of the free flavours

Beyond the sevenths, the open keys hand over a scattering of suspended and sixth chords for the same reason: the note happens to be lying there already.

C♯

F♯

G♯

C♯

Asus2, Asus4 and Esus4; then A6, E6 and G6.

The suspended pairs behave exactly as D's did: the third lifted out and replaced from one side or the other. The sixths add a note above the fifth without disturbing anything underneath.

Fifty-nine shapes in all — and then the open strings run out.

Everything from here needs a different approach, and the next two spreads build it: first the smallest chord on the instrument, then the finger that unlocks the rest.

How to Build a Chord12

GressusPower chords

Two notes, and no third

Take a major chord and remove the third — do not replace it, as a sus chord does, just leave it out. What remains is the root and the fifth: a power chord.

Power0 · 7

R·5

With no third it is neither major nor minor. That sounds like a loss and is in fact the point: a power chord sits under a melody in either key without arguing with it, and a riff built from them can move almost anywhere without changing key.

Fig. 3 — the shape

G5 and C5. Index on the root, third finger two frets up on the next string, and a fourth finger above that. Nothing else sounds.

Three strings, but still only two notes. The top one is the root again, an octave higher — and because it is ringing on a thinner string it carries a different weight and edge from the one below it. That doubling is most of why a power chord sounds big: not more harmony, just the root reinforced above the fifth in a second voice.

How to Build a Chord13

GressusPower chords

Finding the root

The grip names itself off the note under your index finger, and it only ever sits on one of two strings. So the whole of moving a power chord around is knowing what note you have landed on — twelve frets, two rows.

Fig. 4 — the two thickest strings, fret by fret

The 6th and 5th strings. Everything a power chord needs to know is on these two rows.

The rest of the fretboard matters too, and it has its own tool — the Fretboard Visualiser. For power chords it is genuinely this simple: pick a string, find the letter, put the shape there.

Two facts make it quicker. Both strings repeat at the twelfth fret, so you never need more than twelve. And the natural notes are unevenly spaced — the gap between B and C, and between E and F, is one fret, not two.

How to Build a Chord14

GressusPower chords

Moved, and the two exceptions

The grip never changes. Slide it along either string and the chord is renamed by whatever note the index finger has landed on.

Table 3 · The power-chord shape, moved

Fret	Root on 6th string	Root on 5th string
1	F5	B♭5
3	G5	C5
5	A5	D5
7	B5	E5
8	C5	F5
10	D5	G5

Two of them look different, and only because of where they sit. E and A are the open sixth and fifth strings, so on those two the nut holds the root and your index finger has nothing to do.

Fig. 5 — the two open-rooted ones

E5 and A5 — the same shape, with the nut doing the index finger's job.

They are not easier. A finger saved is offset by a shape that no longer tells you where you are: everywhere else the index finger names the chord, and here it is not on the neck at all. Most players find them harder to keep track of, not simpler. Treat them as two positions of the same shape rather than as chords of their own.

How to Build a Chord15

GressusPower chords

Why two notes win

Power chords are not a beginner's simplification. They are the correct answer to a problem the electric guitar created for itself.

Distortion multiplies intervals

A distorted amplifier does not just make a signal louder — it generates new tones from the ones you feed it, at the sums and differences of their frequencies. Feed it two notes a fifth apart, the simplest relationship after the octave, and the extra tones land on the harmonics of the root an octave down. Feed it a full triad and they do not.

The third is what muddies

Of the three notes in a triad, the third is the one whose relationship to the root is least simple. It is the first thing to turn to mush under gain — so removing it is not losing a note, it is removing the note that was going to cause the trouble.

It goes anywhere

Neither major nor minor means neither right nor wrong. A riff can move a power chord up three frets and down five without ever leaving the key, because there is nothing in the chord to clash.

That combination — clean under gain, movable, keyless — is why rock, punk and metal are built almost entirely from two notes and a lot of conviction.

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GressusBarre chords

The dreaded barre chords

An open chord depends on the nut: the slotted strip at the top of the neck that stops the open strings. Lay your index finger flat across the strings and you have built a second nut, wherever you like.

That single idea is the difference between eight chords and all of them. The shape does not change — it simply starts somewhere else.

Fig. 6 — nut, then finger

C♯

B♭

A major, then the identical shape moved up one fret with the index finger bearing the load. The bar across the diagram is that finger.

A barre chord is not a new chord. It is an open shape with your finger doing the nut's job.

It is harder to hold, and that is the whole of the difficulty. There is nothing new to learn — only something to build up to.

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GressusBarre chords

Holding one

The barre is the one thing on this instrument that is genuinely a physical obstacle rather than a mental one. Almost everyone fails at it for a while, and almost everyone fails in the same four ways.

Start at the fifth fret, not the first

The strings are easier to press and the frets are closer together at the fifth fret than at the first. The shape is identical and the effort is a fraction. Work back towards the nut as the hand allows — the first fret is the hardest place on the guitar, and it is where most people give up.

Roll the finger onto its side

The flat pad of the index finger has creases in it, and the strings find them. Roll slightly towards the thumb so the harder edge of the finger meets the strings.

Thumb behind, not over

Put the thumb flat on the back of the neck, roughly opposite the middle finger. It is the counter-pressure that does the work — squeezing harder with the index alone just tires it.

Sit the finger close to the fret

Just behind the fretwire, not in the middle of the gap. Half the buzz people blame on strength is position.

If one string buzzes, that is normal and it is fixable. If six do, move up the neck and start again.

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GressusBarre chords

The E shape

Of the eight open chords, two are worth barring above all others, and the first is E. Its root is the sixth string — the thickest — so wherever your barre lands on that string is what the chord is called.

Fig. 7 — open E, then the same shape barred

G♯

E, and the identical shape with the index finger at the first fret — F. Nothing about the grip has changed; the nut has simply been replaced by a finger.

Refinger the open shape before you barre it: play E with your second, third and fourth fingers rather than first, second and third. The index is then free to lie flat, and the barre becomes a small change instead of a new chord.

Barred at the first fret it is F — the barre chord almost everyone meets first, and the one that stops most people. At the third it is G, at the fifth A, at the eighth C.

You have already played the bottom of this shape. The three thickest strings of a barred E are root, fifth and root — the power chord from four spreads ago, with the rest of the chord built on top of it.

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GressusBarre chords

The Em shape

And its twin. Em is E with one finger lifted — the third dropping to a minor third — and the barred version keeps that relationship exactly.

Fig. 8 — open Em, then barred

A♭

Em and Fm. One finger separates each of these from its major, in both positions.

Two shapes, one finger between them, and the whole sixth string to move along.

That is twenty-four chords from one hand position. The pages that follow apply every other alteration to the same grip — sevenths, suspensions, the power chord — each one a finger added, moved or taken away.

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GressusBarre chords

Twelve frets, twenty-four chords

A barre shape describes distances between strings, and those distances do not care where on the neck they start. Move the whole grip up a fret and every note in it rises by one step — so the chord type is unchanged and only the root has moved.

The root of both these shapes is the sixth string, so whatever note your barre lands on there is the name of the chord.

Table 4 · The E and Em shapes, moved

Barre	E shape	Em shape
1	F	Fm
3	G	Gm
5	A	Am
7	B	Bm
8	C	Cm
10	D	Dm

Twelve frets, two shapes, one finger between them — twenty-four chords from a single hand position. That is what makes the barre worth the weeks of pain it takes, and it does take weeks. It hurts. It buzzes. It sounds awful long after you understand perfectly well what it is supposed to do.

Nobody in the history of the guitar has found this step easy. It is the single biggest point at which people give up. You will make it — persist.

The pages that follow apply every other alteration to this same grip — sevenths, the suspension, the power chord — each one a finger added, moved or taken away.

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GressusE form

Major

Major0 · 4 · 7

R·3·5

Full barre at the first fret with the E shape above it. This is the chord that stops more players than any other — not because it is complicated, but because the first fret is the stiffest place on the neck.

Fig. 9 — F, both ways

The full barre, and the four-string F most people actually start on — the same chord with the two thickest strings left out.

The short version is not a lesser chord. It contains F, A and C exactly as the barre does; it simply drops the doubled root and fifth underneath. Use it while the hand builds, and keep testing the full barre at the fifth fret where it is easiest.

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GressusE form

Minor

Minor0 · 3 · 7

R·♭3·5

Three steps, then four — the major's two steps swapped over.

Fig. 10 — Fm, E form

A♭

The major with one finger lifted, exactly as Em is E with one finger lifted.

Major and minor a single finger apart, in a shape that moves.

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GressusE form

Sus4

Sus40 · 5 · 7

R·4·5

Five steps, then two. No third again — this time replaced from above.

Fig. 11 — F, E form

B♭

That same finger pushed up instead of lifted — the third replaced from above.

The suspension you met on the D grip, now movable to any root.

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GressusE form

Dominant 7

Dom70 · 4 · 7 · 10

R·3·5·♭7

The major triad, then a minor seventh — ten steps up, two short of the octave.

Fig. 12 — F, E form

E♭

A finger lifted from the middle of the major barre. The seventh appears where it was.

The easiest seventh on the instrument, and the reason blues lives in E and A.

How to Build a Chord25

GressusE form

Major 7

Maj70 · 4 · 7 · 11

R·3·5·7

The major triad, then a major seventh — eleven steps, one below the octave.

Fig. 13 — F, E form

That same finger back by one fret rather than lifted altogether.

One fret between restless and settled, held in one hand.

How to Build a Chord26

GressusE form

Minor 7

Min70 · 3 · 7 · 10

R·♭3·5·♭7

The minor triad, then a minor seventh.

Fig. 14 — F, E form

A♭

E♭

The dominant shape with the third dropped — the major-to-minor move again.

Soft and open, and the most-used four-note grip in rhythm playing.

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GressusE form

When a chord will not fit

The E form ran to six chord types and stopped. That is not an omission — it is the barre, and it constrains the shape from both directions.

The floor

The bar is the bottom of the shape: every note sits on it or above it, so any alteration needing a note below that line has nowhere to go. Sus4 works, because the fourth sits one fret above the third. The second sits two frets below it, which falls under the bar — so there is no E-form sus2. The flattened fifth hits the same wall, taking the diminished and half-diminished chords with it.

The ceiling

The other limit is your hand. A barred E already spends the index finger on the bar, leaving three. F6 needs four notes above the bar — two at the third fret, one at the second, one more at the third — which is one finger more than you have. It can be played, but only by barring two of them with the ring finger as well, and a diagram showing a single bar would not be telling you the truth.

Six types, then the shape runs out of frets underneath and fingers on top.

Every one of those chords exists — sus2, diminished, half-diminished, the sixth. They simply live in the other form, which is what the next spread is for.

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GressusBarre chords

The A shape

The second form, and the one that fills the gaps. Its root is the fifth string, so the twelve frets you have already learned now name a second set of chords — and it is the more awkward of the two to hold, because three fingers have to crowd onto a single fret while the index carries everything below them.

Fig. 15 — open A, then the same shape barred

C♯

B♭

A, and the identical shape at the first fret — B♭. The sixth string drops out; the index takes the nut's job on the remaining five.

Many players bar the three crowded notes with the ring finger instead of using three separate fingers, and mute the top string. Both are correct; use whichever your hand allows.

What this form buys you is reach. Every chord type the E form could not manage is here, which is why the pages that follow run to eleven rather than six.

At the first fret it is B♭; at the third, C; at the fifth, D; at the eighth, F.

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GressusBarre chords

The Am shape

Am is A with one finger moved back a fret, and barring it changes nothing about that relationship.

Fig. 16 — open Am, then barred

B♭

D♭

Am and B♭m. The finger that moves is the one on the third, exactly as in the E form.

B♭m is often the first barre chord that feels genuinely comfortable, because the shape above the barre is compact — there is no three-finger row to crowd.

Table 5 · The A and Am shapes, moved

Barre	A shape	Am shape
1	B♭	B♭m
3	C	Cm
5	D	Dm
7	E	Em
8	F	Fm
10	G	Gm

Twenty-four more, and every one of them a chord you can already play in the other form somewhere else on the neck. That doubling is the point: two places for every chord means you rarely have to jump.

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GressusA form

Major

Major0 · 4 · 7

R·3·5

Four steps for the major third, three more for the fifth.

Fig. 17 — B♭, A form

B♭

Index across five strings at the first fret, three fingers at the third.

The second of the two reference grips. Root on the fifth string.

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GressusA form

Minor

Minor0 · 3 · 7

R·♭3·5

Three steps, then four — the major's two steps swapped over.

Fig. 18 — B♭m, A form

B♭

D♭

The major barre with one finger moved back a fret — that finger is on the third.

Between this and the E form you can play every major and minor there is.

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GressusA form

Sus2

Sus20 · 2 · 7

R·2·5

Two steps, then five. No third at all — replaced by the note below it.

Fig. 19 — B♭, A form

B♭

The barre thins: index at the first, two fingers at the third, top string left off.

The sus2 the E form could not reach, because here the second sits on the bar.

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GressusA form

Sus4

Sus40 · 5 · 7

R·4·5

Five steps, then two. No third again — this time replaced from above.

Fig. 20 — B♭, A form

B♭

E♭

The sus2 frame with the top voice pushed up to the fourth fret.

One finger from its twin, and one finger from resolving onto the major.

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GressusA form

Diminished

Dim0 · 3 · 6

R·♭3·♭5

Three steps, then three more. Two identical minor thirds, stacked.

Fig. 21 — B♭, A form

B♭

D♭

F♭

Four fingers, no barre, two strings muted — even spacing does not fall under a bar.

Tense and passing through. Diminished shapes are nearly always partial.

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GressusA form

Augmented

Aug0 · 4 · 8

R·3·♯5

Four steps, then four more. Two identical major thirds, the fifth pushed up.

Fig. 22 — B♭, A form

B♭

F♯

Again four fingers and two strings off — the same trade as diminished.

Equal steps divide the octave into three, so only four augmented triads exist.

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GressusA form

Dominant 7

Dom70 · 4 · 7 · 10

R·3·5·♭7

The major triad, then a minor seventh — ten steps up, two short of the octave.

Fig. 23 — B♭, A form

B♭

A♭

The major barre with one finger lifted; the seventh appears where it was.

Restless, and it pulls a fourth upwards. The engine of the blues.

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GressusA form

Major 7

Maj70 · 4 · 7 · 11

R·3·5·7

The major triad, then a major seventh — eleven steps, one below the octave.

Fig. 24 — B♭, A form

B♭

One finger up a fret from the dominant shape, on the string carrying the seventh.

Open and warm, going nowhere at all.

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GressusA form

Minor 7

Min70 · 3 · 7 · 10

R·♭3·5·♭7

The minor triad, then a minor seventh.

Fig. 25 — B♭, A form

B♭

D♭

A♭

The dominant shape with the third dropped a fret.

The workhorse of soul, funk and jazz rhythm playing.

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GressusA form

Half-diminished 7

Half-dim0 · 3 · 6 · 10

R·♭3·♭5·♭7

A diminished triad, then an ordinary minor seventh — not a diminished one. That is what makes it half diminished.

Fig. 26 — B♭, A form

B♭

D♭

F♭

A♭

A compact four-string grip: the fifth comes down a fret from the minor seventh.

Core classical harmony — the viiø7 of a major key, the iiø7 of a minor one.

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GressusA form

Sixth

6th0 · 4 · 7 · 9

R·3·5·6

A complete major triad, then two more steps above the fifth.

Fig. 27 — B♭, A form

B♭

Index at the first fret and a second bar across four strings at the third.

The sixth the E form ran out of fingers for. Here the bar does the extra work.

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GressusThe five shapes

Why five, and not two

E and A are the two shapes worth barring, because their roots sit on the two thickest strings and the grips survive being moved. But they are not the only open shapes, and the other three — C, G and D — can be moved too, with more difficulty and more stretching.

Taken together the five spell CAGED, and the system says something useful: any chord can be found in five places along the neck, once in each shape, and the five interlock so that the top of one is the bottom of the next.

Five shapes, five positions, one chord. The neck stops being twelve unrelated frets.

In practice most players live in the E and A forms and borrow from the other three — a C-shape fragment here, a D-shape voicing there — rather than barring them whole. The G shape in particular asks for a stretch that few hands enjoy.

The facing page shows one chord in all five, so you can see the interlock.

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GressusThe five shapes

C major, five ways

The same three notes — C, E and G — found five times along the neck, each in a different open shape moved into position.

C form

A form

G form

E form

D form

C form at the nut, A form at the third, G form at the fifth, E form at the eighth, D form at the tenth. Each shape begins where the last one ends.

Read the roots and the pattern shows itself: every shape is anchored to a C somewhere in the grip, and the five Cs between them cover the whole neck.

The library currently stores one voicing per chord, so four of these five positions are not yet in it. The full set of CAGED voicings is going in before release — at which point every chord in the book can be looked up in all five places, not just the one.

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GressusVoicings

Six strings, three notes

A triad has three notes and the guitar has six strings. Something has to give, and it gives in three ways.

Notes get doubled

Open G sounds all six strings but contains three different notes, with G appearing three times. Doubling changes how full a chord sounds, never what it is.

Strings get muted

Open D uses four strings and mutes two, because those strings would put a note other than D in the bass. The × is an instruction, not an omission.

The fifth gets dropped

In a seventh chord the fifth is the least informative note — present in the major and the minor alike. The third and the seventh identify the chord, so when a shape will not fit, the fifth goes first.

What you must not drop is the third, unless you mean to. Remove it and you have not simplified the chord — you have turned it into a sus or a power chord.

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GressusIn practice

Putting it to work

Building a chord you have never played

Take the root, count the formula on the ruler, then find it as an alteration of a barre you already hold. B♭ø7 is R ♭3 ♭5 ♭7: start from B♭m7 and pull the fifth down a fret.

Transposing

The distances stay fixed while everything moves. If a song sits too high to sing, slide every barre by the same number of frets; the open chords are the ones that will not come with you, which is exactly when a capo earns its place. To work out which key you have landed in, and which chords travel with you, use the circle of fifths — that is the diagram transposition is really made of.

Learning the two strings

Power chords and barre chords both name themselves off the 6th and 5th strings. Learning those two rows — and only those two — is the highest-value memorising on the instrument.

Bookmark the library

Every chord here, on every root, is in the full library — open shapes where they exist, barre forms where they do not. Filter it by letter, by quality, or by the style you actually play.

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GressusCommon questions

Common questions

Why does the library show a barre for some chords and an open shape for others?

Open shapes exist only where the open strings happen to belong to the chord. Five majors and three minors are lucky that way. Everything else has to be fingered or barred.

My barre buzzes. Am I doing it wrong?

Probably not — it is the one genuinely physical obstacle on the guitar. Move to the fifth fret, roll the index onto its side, and put the thumb flat behind the neck rather than over the top.

Is a barre chord a different chord?

No. It is an open shape with your finger doing the nut's job, which is what lets it move.

Are power chords major or minor?

Neither, and deliberately so. They contain no third, and the third is the note that decides. That is what lets a riff move them around without changing key.

Why is C♯ sometimes called D♭?

They are the same fret, spelled differently depending on the music around them — two names for one pitch are called enharmonic equivalents .

Some books write ø7 and others m7♭5 — which is right?

Both name the same four notes. ø7 , half-diminished seventh, is the classical name and the one used here; m7♭5 is the jazz and lead-sheet spelling. Expect to meet both.

How to Build a Chord46

TOM · Teacher Of Music

The old textbook, brought to life.

Every diagram here is a tool you actually use — free, and built to practise with.

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