Know Your Chords - 7th Chords (A Shapes)

7th Chords will be the first installment in the "Know your Chords" series. I'm going to approach this the same way you were taught bar chords, E shapes and A Shapes. The E shapes will be referenced at the 5th fret making it an A chord, the A shapes will be referenced at the 7th fret making it an E chord.

This way you can start with memorizing the shape and chord name based on a chord shape you already know. These shapes are also moveable, like a bar chord, so shifting them around will help you play them in other keys. I'm going to show them in E bar shapes and A bar shapes so you can have a few different places on the fretboard to play them.

7th Chords:
Here are the notes that are included to build these chords and their names:

Chord	Name	Chord Structure
E7	Dominant 7th	1, 3, 5, ♭7
Emaj7	Major 7th	1, 3, 5, 7
E7sus	Suspended 7th	1, 4, 5, ♭7
Em7	Minor 7th	1, ♭3, 5, ♭7
Eaug7	Augmented 7th	1, 3, ♯5, ♭7
Em7b5	Half diminished	1, ♭3, ♭5, ♭7
Edim7	Diminished 7th	1, ♭3, ♭5, ♭♭7

Rather than focusing on the theory of the chord, which is included above in the chord structure, I want to focus on learning the shape. This will help you remember it and add it to your chord vocabulary.

We will start with the A chord shapes of the 7th chord, in the next post I will detail the E chord shapes of the same chords:

I recommend playing through these over and over and memorizing their names when you play them.