184 Open Chords You Never Knew Existed
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Most chord books teach you movable shapes. This one does the opposite.
Every chord in here is stuck in the first five frets, because every one of them leans on at least one open string. You can't slide them anywhere. That's also exactly why they sound like nothing else you play — an open string ringing underneath a fretted extension is a sound you only get on a guitar in standard tuning, and most players never go looking for it.
So this is a revisit of the first position, except with the chords nobody taught you: 13ths, altered dominants, major 7#11s, 6/9s and a long list of minor voicings, in open position, across ten keys.
What's in it
Diagrams for C, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, A, Bb and B. Each one shows the shape, the suggested fingering, which strings to leave out, and the notes you're actually playing. Roots are marked in red, so you can see what makes a voicing sound the way it does rather than just copying dots off a page.
There's a short section of progressions built only from chords in the book, so you can play them without leaving it. And an alphabetical index, because a chord book filed by key is no use when you want to look one thing up.
Who it's for
Anyone past the first year who's bored of the same eight chords. You don't need to read music or know any theory — the diagrams carry everything. If your first-position vocabulary stopped growing around the time you learned F, this will give it a shove.
What it isn't
A reference of movable shapes. Those exist, and I've written one — 2-Note Chords is the opposite end of the same idea, all movable, no open strings. This book is the other extreme: shapes you can only play in one place, worth learning because of what they sound like, not because they're convenient.
Free, as are the Blues Chord Book and the Chord Builder tool on the site.
Every chord in here is stuck in the first five frets, because every one of them leans on at least one open string. You can't slide them anywhere. That's also exactly why they sound like nothing else you play — an open string ringing underneath a fretted extension is a sound you only get on a guitar in standard tuning, and most players never go looking for it.
So this is a revisit of the first position, except with the chords nobody taught you: 13ths, altered dominants, major 7#11s, 6/9s and a long list of minor voicings, in open position, across ten keys.
What's in it
Diagrams for C, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, A, Bb and B. Each one shows the shape, the suggested fingering, which strings to leave out, and the notes you're actually playing. Roots are marked in red, so you can see what makes a voicing sound the way it does rather than just copying dots off a page.
There's a short section of progressions built only from chords in the book, so you can play them without leaving it. And an alphabetical index, because a chord book filed by key is no use when you want to look one thing up.
Who it's for
Anyone past the first year who's bored of the same eight chords. You don't need to read music or know any theory — the diagrams carry everything. If your first-position vocabulary stopped growing around the time you learned F, this will give it a shove.
What it isn't
A reference of movable shapes. Those exist, and I've written one — 2-Note Chords is the opposite end of the same idea, all movable, no open strings. This book is the other extreme: shapes you can only play in one place, worth learning because of what they sound like, not because they're convenient.
Free, as are the Blues Chord Book and the Chord Builder tool on the site.