Play All 7 Chords of a Major Scale Staying in 1 Position | Los Angeles or Skype Guitar Lessons with Vreny

A Chord Exercise on Guitar: Play All 7 Chords of a Major Scale Staying in 1 Position.

This is an exercise for upper intermediate to advanced guitarists.

Pick a key, a scale, and a location on the guitar neck.
For example, the key of C major, 5th position.

Then play all the 7 chords of a C major scale, trying to stay as close as possible to the 5th position.
This is a great test to see how well you really know your fretboard and your harmony.

It’s also a fun exercise though: that will greatly improve your chord knowledge.

If you get stuck on a chord somewhere in the exercise, see if you can assemble the notes for that chord together in that location on the neck.
You will come up with and learn new shapes for chords.

It helps if you know drop 2, drop 3 and other drop voicings.
That’s a big chapter I teach my private students who show an interest in learning more about chords.

You could vary up the parameters of this exercise.
For example, you could choose to do this exercise with only triads.
Or with all 7th chords.
In a later, more advanced stage: you could even decide to add tensions to every one of the 7 chords.

The following videos showcase how this works.

And here with triads:

You probably want to practice in the key of C first before you move on to keys with sharps and flats.
Practice this in C in as many positions as you can.
When you feel pretty confident doing this exercise in the key of C, work through all 12 keys up the circle of 4ths.

Conclusion

This is a great exercise to further sharpen your chord knowledge and your fretboard knowledge.
This exercise will also give you more harmonic freedom.
Being able to find and play a version of any chord anywhere on the guitar neck, is a fun, freeing skill to have.

Again: this is advanced harmony applied on guitar.
You can still do this exercise even if you have limited chord knowledge.
However: this would then only be possible if you have memorized what the notes are that make up every chord, and if your fretboard knowledge is strong enough for you to be able to find those notes you’re looking for.

Hit me up anytime at vreny@zotzinmusic.com if you have any questions, or if you would like to book a lesson.

These free lessons are cool, but you will never experience the progress, joy, and results that my students experience in lessons when you’re learning by yourself from blogs and videos.

That is why people take lessons: way better results and progress, much more complete information, exposed to way more creative ideas than you can get from a blog or YouTube video.
There is only so much that self-study can accomplish.

If you want to see amazing results and progress in your guitar playing, buy your first lesson here and get started ASAP.