A7, D7, E7 Chords (Guitar Lesson BC-151) Guitar for beginners Stage 5

This is Stage 5, Lesson 1 of Justin's Beginner Guitar Course.

This video shows you an easy way of speeding up your chord changes and making your songs sound better and more in time by forcing yourself to keep strumming!

The Justinguitar Beginners Guitar Course, a series of over 100 lessons on guitar for beginners. Text support is on the web site and also in a proper old skool paper book which can be ordered from the web site of your local music store :)

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

Full support at the justinguitar web site where you will find hundreds of lessons on a wide range of subjects, and all the scales and chords that you will ever need! There is a great forum too to get help, no matter what the problem.

And it is all totally free, no bull. No sample lessons, no memberships, no free ebook. Just tons of great lessons :)

To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

http://www.justinguitar.com

Have fun :)

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Hello, how you doing? Justin here.

Welcome to Stage 5.

And in this first lesson of Stage 5,

we're going to be checking out 3 new chords

and they're going to be A7, D7 and E7.

You'll be please to know
they are a little easier

than the previous 7th chords we learned.

But hopefully your fingers
are nice and limber

and ready to get some new sounds in your ears.

So let's go to a close up
and check out these new chords.

OK, here's the first chord we're checking out today.

And this is A7.

Now this a pretty straight forward chord.

If you are used to playing
a regular A chord,

then A7 is as simple as lifting off your first finger

and you've got A7.

Making sure, of course,
that you don't play the thickest string

because that's got the little cross to it.

And we go through and check out the notes (plays)

The difficulty here is always getting the open strings

so making sure this second finger
is exactly positionned

between the A string and the G string

or the 5th string and the 3rd string

depending on what lingo you like. (plays)

So sometimes that G string can be
a little bit difficult : you get that

(plays) from that second finger.

so just, again, it's about using
those fingertips (plays)

Same with that third finger,
nice, sharply done (plays)

Now there is a little variation
that you can also play for this A7.

If you've been playing your A chord like this,

with the first finger bar
and you're digging that method,

you might probably find
that doing that,

if you've got big fingers,
is pretty difficult to get your A7.

So another common one is
to use our little A mini bar chord

and then putting down the third finger

on the thinner string there (plays)
on the third fret of the thinner string

so regular A mini bar,
adding 3rd finger on the thinner string.

This is kind of your classic
kind of blues one

if you're doing kind of
Robert Johnson stylie stuff

or Clapton or something.

You'd probably tend to play A7 like this
(plays)

A very hip little chord, that one.

OK, the next chord we are going to check out
is this one.

This is D7 (plays),
lovely sounding little chord.

I kind of think of it like it's a backwards D,

like these two notes are the same.
There's your regular D

and the note on this string
is just moved back two frets (plays)

We go to D7, if you look at a picture of it,
it kind of looks like a mirror of the D.

It's how I remember the D7
or how I used to.

And so we're just starting
1st finger : 1st fret, 2nd string,

2nd finger : 2nd fret, 3rd string

and 3rd finger down on the 2nd fret
of the thinner string, 1st string.

Pretty straight forward,
the difficulty here again is making sure

that this finger is nice and pointed
and not muting the second string.

So (plays) that's the string
you want to check the most,

is the B string, 2nd string (plays),

remembering of course that we are not
playing the thickest two strings.

And the last chord
that we are going to look at

in this little segment is E7.
Now there's a regular E,

if we lift off the third finger,
we've got E7.

. . .

Again, really nice sounding little chord.

The difficulty again is getting
this finger pointy enough (plays)

. . .

to hear that D string closely.

. . .

That's the fourth string there
I am checking.

That's the hardest one to get.

The rest of it, if you can do it,
you should find pretty straight forward.

Just, you might have
a little bit of fun with that.

If you have too much fun with it
or it's too difficult,

start with your regular E

and just simply add
your little finger down here

. . .

in the third fret of the second string

and you've got another really,
really cool way of playing E7.

So, there's a bunch more new
dominant sounding chords for you to play,

dominant meaning seven chords.

So the big name for all of these sort of chords
is the dominant seventh chord,

like an A dominant seventh,
but it just gets shortened to A7.

So, just in case you hearing people
calling them dominant chords

and you're not sure what that means,

dominant seven and seven by itself
are exactly the same thing.

But they do have a different sound
to major seven,

as you probably remember
from our F major seven chord.

It doesn't have a very bluesy sound,

where all these seventh chords,
dominant seventh chords,

. . .

they sound bluesy.

. . .

They've got that kind of real earthy blues sound
to dominant seventh chords.

Very good ones for your ears.

You should definitely be doing your ear training
or JUSTIN ear training stuff

to make sure you recognize
the sound of those dominant chords.

Very useful.

So, those three chords we are going to make
a blues in the common chord sequences.

So make sure you go and check that out.

But we've got a few other little tricks
to teach you this lesson first.

So stay tuned and I'll see you
for another little lesson very soon.

Well, I hope you enjoyed
those new chords to check out.

They're all quite bluesy sounding,
pretty cool I reckon.

It doesn't really matter
which version of the different chords.

So, I've showed you two different ways
of playing the A7

and two different ways
of playing the E7.

You can use whichever one you like.

It's really a matter of taste,
listening to the sound of it and going :

'Yeah, I want this sound in this song
or I want that sound'.

Really, the quality of the chord,
if it says A7 in the sheet music,

you can play A7 whatever way you like.

And it's still going to sound cool.

It's just a preference
as to which sound you want to hear.

So, it's very important as well
that you get this sound of the A7 chords in your ear,

not the A7, all of the seventh chords in your ear.

Now you'll often hear these seventh chords
referred to as dominant sevenths.

So when you say A7,
it really means A dominant seventh.

But we just assume dominant
when we write A7.

So, if you see A7 or A dominant 7,
then that's exactly the same thing.

Now, it's really important
that you get used to the sound of this as well.

The dominant seventh chords have
a real kind of bluesy sound to them.

They've got a lot of pull,

there's quite a lot of dissonance
in the sound of the chords.

And that's very different
to the sound of major seventh.

So, if you go back
and listen to your F major seven,

you hear that it's got a different kind of -
I'll just do it for you now actually.

If you listen to this (plays)
it's kind of quite a happy sound

. . .

Where as the dominant seventh chords

. . .

is quite sharp.
It's got a real

. . .

It's got a lot of pull in it

and a lot of that kind of
'aarrr' dissonance going on.

So make sure that you listen,
do a little bit of ear training,

that JUSTIN ear training stuff

or whatever that helps you
sort out the sounds of the different chords.

It's very important,

especially when you are transcribing
and working out songs for yourself,

that you can hear the sound of the chord
and go :

'Oh yeah, that's a dominant seventh chord
or that's a major seven

or that's a minor nine chord
or whatever.

So, as we're learning
each of these new chords,

you should be trying to get the sound
of those chords firmly in your ear.

OK, now we're going to have
a little bit of look at

a very, very little,
very easy bit of music theory.

See you in a sec.