- The 7th chord ( the dominant 7) is played as a major chord with an added flattened 7th note of the scale e.g. In open G tuning we can play a D7 as 7 7 5:
- The minor 7 chord is based on a minor chord with an added flattened 7.
- The major 7 chord is based on a major chord with an added 7.
How To Play The Dominant 7 Chord On A 3 String Guitar
I find that as a beginner it’s much easier to remember chord shapes that are movable and based on the 1 finger power chord. The chord shape for D7 in the chord chart above is based on the D power chord with the top string changed from the root or 1st note (D) to the flattened 7th note (C)
The shape of the 1 finger barre power chord makes it very convenient to drop that top note down 2 frets. You could drop the bass note down to give 5 7 7 which is an inversion of the 7 7 5 fingering ( remember that an inversion is just the same notes in a different order)
I have given you the table above as an easy way to remember how to play 7th chords but there are alternative fingerings you can use. Perhaps one of the most useful is G7 played as 0 3 4:
This chord shape contains the notes G F B rather than the G D F that the chord in the above table contains. The full G7 chord contains the notes G B D F. With only 3 strings we are inevitably going to have to omit some of the notes of some of the more complicated chords. Deciding which note to omit is really down to personal choice- choose the shape that best matches the sound you want with a shape you can play.
You may be wondering whether we can use this alternative shape as a movable shape. The answer is yes, but it is quite a big stretch (at least for me). To play A7 this way would require a barre ( or at least a 1st finger) on the 2nd fret of the bass string , a finger on the 5th fret of the middle string and another finger on the 6th fret of the top string and my fingers struggle to reach.
However if you have a good stretch or a short scaled instrument, you may be able to use this shape:
If you prefer you can play the chords above with the bass and top string the other way round. This is because the top string and bass string both G but an octave apart. I prefer it with the root in the bass but it’s up to you.
When Is The Dominant 7 Chord Used?
The dominant 7 is the chord that always wants to go back to the I chord. It is the “going home” chord that is often played just before the last root chord of a song. It is the V or 5 of the 12 bar blues.
Here is a table to show you how the usual 3 main chords of a song are linked:
| KEY | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B | C | C#/Db | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Eb |
| I | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B | C | C#/Db | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Eb |
| IV | C | C#/Db | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Gb | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B |
| V7 | D7 | D#7/Eb7 | E7 | F7 | F#7/Eb7 | G7 | G#7/Ab7 | A7 | A#7/Bb7 | B7 | C7 | C#7/Db7 |
For instance, if we are playing in the key of A, the I chord is an A major, the IV chord is a D major and the V chord is an E7. We can replace any of these chords with a power chord i.e. A power, D power and E power.
For more information on how to play power chords read my articles: How To Play A Cigar Box Guitar With One Finger and Power Chords On a Guitar With 3 Strings
For more information on how to play major chords see How Do I Play Major Chords On A Cigar Box Guitar?
And if you are interested in minor chords see How Do I Play Minor Chords On A Cigar Box Guitar?
A Very Useful Movable Chord Shape Progression For I, IV and V Chords
In the example above, the first fret of the middle string is D# or Eb, so the above chords are Eb, Ab and Bb7
We can move these three shapes up the fretboard.
e.g. for G, C and D7 try 7 5 7 for the I chord, 5 5 5 for the IV chord, 5 7 7 for the V7 chord:
- The first reason I like this grouping is that all the chords are grouped on frets that are close together.
- The second reason is that I find them fairly easy to remember now that I have learned the note positions on the middle string.
- As long as I know which note that first finger is sitting on in the I chord, I can confidently know which key I am in and which other 2 chords are linked to that key.
- This is a movable chord pattern up and down the neck and across tuning patterns as long as I am playing in I V I tuning eg G D G or E B E or D A D or even A E A
How To Play The Minor 7 Chord On A 3 String Guitar
The minor 7 chord is based on a minor chord with an added flattened 7.
In my lessons on how to play major and minor chords ( see links above) we have been basing our major and minor keys on the power chord with an added 3rd or flattened 3rd.
I showed you an alternative for G7 above ( just below the table) in which we play 0 3 4. This gives us the notes G F B. For G minor 7 (usually shortened to Gm7) we need to flatten that B note to a Bb.
This gives us Gm7 played as 0 3 3:
To move this shape up the fretboard is possible for me. I can just about stretch to get the barre and the other 2 fingers in the correct position. This is why I have put have 3rd and 4th fingers in the chart instead of the 1st and 2nd.
Here is a table for the minor 7 chords:
Remember that this chord chart can be inverted with the bass and top string switched if you prefer.
How To Play The Major 7 Chord On A 3 String Guitar
The major 7 chord is based on a major chord with an added 7.
I have a chart below for this chord shape moved up the fretboard.
I’m going to show you how I arrived at this movable chord shape.
How To Work Out A Chord Shape For 3 Stringed Cigar Box Guitar
- Start with the notes you want to include
- Omit any you don’t need
- Group these notes together on the fretboard
- See if the shape is playable
- Check you like the sound – try an inversion if you don’t
- Check which string the root is played on
- Write down the chord shape so you don’t forget it
Here is a sheet of blank chord charts for you to download if you need them:
When we learned how to change a power chord into a major chord in How Do I Play Major Chords On A Cigar Box Guitar? we found that adding the little finger to the 4th fret above the barre added the note we needed. Is there a way of using this shape to add in the 7th note to make a major 7?
The notes we need for the G major 7 chord are G B D F#. We can play 0 4 4 giving us G B and F# or 0 0 4 giving us G D B. You may have noticed that 0 0 4 is the same as the G major chord, so an option is to just replace the major 7 chord with the major chord.
The other chord shape 0 4 4 is fine for me at that position but again I just don’t have a big enough stretch to reach 1 5 5 so for me it’s not a movable chord shape.
However I really like the sound of that G major 7 so I experimented with different inversions to see if I could find a movable shape. When I’m looking for chord shapes I like look at my trusty notes chart to see if I can find the notes I need on frets that are fairly close together:
| FRET NUMBER | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| BASS STRING | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B | C | C#/Db | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Gb | G |
| MIDDLE STRING | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Gb | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B | C | C#/Db | D |
| TOP STRING | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B | C | C#/Db | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Gb | G |
I’ve added a link to download this chart if you’d like a copy:
Next I find all the notes I need for the chord by highlighting all the notes that are G, B and F#:
| FRET NUMBER | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| BASS STRING | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B | C | C#/Db | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Gb | G |
| MIDDLE STRING | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Gb | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B | C | C#/Db | D |
| TOP STRING | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B | C | C#/Db | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Gb | G |
Then I see that I could play 12 9 11 or 11 9 12 to get the notes I want. I try to play this chord and see what it sounds like.
I prefer the sound of 12 9 11 so I try to play that shape further down the fretboard to see if I can stretch that far( the first few frets are wider so it’s harder to stretch, especially over the first 4 frets)
12 9 11 translates to 3 0 2 which I can play and 4 1 3 is quite a big a stretch but just about playable for me, so I think I have found my movable shape for the major 7 chords. I look to see which fret/finger is playing the root note to work out which major 7 chord I’m playing. For 12 9 11, the root is on the bass note, so that’s the same for all the shapes:
Again you can invert this shape if you prefer. You may notice that we cannot use a bass string fret lower than the 3rd fret and that’s because we need to accommodate that 0 on the middle string.
Different Ways Of Playing The 7th Chord On a Cigar Box Guitar
I have tried to give you helpful movable chord shapes for the dominant 7, minor 7 and major 7 chords. However there are lots of ways of playing 7 chords and the one you choose for a particular song may be different than one you choose for another song. Why is that?
It’s because the choice of chord shape is based not only on what you can easily reach to play in isolation. It depends which chord comes before it and which chord comes after it.
When learning moveable chords, it really helps me to get one of the chords firmly in my head, not just the shape but where it is on the fretboard. I can then use this knowledge to move the shape up or down the fretboard until eventually I know more shapes at the correct position for lots of chords. I will soon be adding more articles grouping together movable chord shapes.
The first of these is found here: How To Play Just About Any Chord On The Cigar Box Guitar
I hope this method will help you too.