Ok, now the F chord that you just learned remember is one of our friends from the caged system with a bar behind it.
Now we're going to learn one more chord and we're going to take a caged chord, namely the C chord
and instead of barring it we're going to do something a little bit different, we're going to drop it down behind the nut a half step.
What we're going to need is a B chord.
If you want to play in the key of E, remember that nice, big, ringing six string E chord, that's also a nice key to play in
but the one chord in E makes the A chord the four chord.
The five chord then needs to be a B. Keep your alphabet in mind: A, B, C, D, E, F, G and repeat back to A.
So if E is number one: E, F, G, A, we have that one. B we need for a five chord.
What we're doing, it's going to look like this it's a five string chord and we start down here.
Here's a B note on the root and then we're going to go first fret, fourth string, second fret, third string and second fret first string.
It's kind of stacked up in there, that's what it looks like
but before you try to hard to build this chord I want you to understand why it's related to the CAGED chords that you already know.
What it is, is it's taking the C chord and dropping it down a half step.
Obviously you can't play down here the nut's in the way but if you can hear that
that's the beginning of the C chord you can probably hear that's the beginning of a B chord.
The only problem is some open strings around it don't work so we have to do some other things.
We're going to trade positions here, this could be our C chord, we're dropping that down.
The same two notes , the same position, now we'll pick this up.
So you can see on the chord chart what's going on here but again, the most important thing for you to know right now is this is a modified C shape chord.
What we've done is we've taken the C shape
and if it were possible we're dropping it behind the nut a little bit, we're making the adjustments necessary to do that.
So this is what the E chord family sounds like…
A lot of songs use this key, again, it's handy for singing a lot of songs in and so this is a chord shape that you're going to need down here.
Working the transitions, notice my middle finger isn't having to move, these two are almost kind of reversing roles there.
This one's going up a string and this one's going down a string.
That's not too hard and then add the pinky, everything else is open down there and no sixth string yet.
It's looks a little strange probably to you but it's actually not a hard chord to fret well but it's
because all four of your fingers have a different job to do it can be hard to get there in a hurry until you get familiar with the shape.
Again, focus on getting there to and from the E chord first, then try it from your A chord.
This is one of the times when it's nice to be fretting the A chord this way because now you're, look how easy that is.
This finger doesn't move, each of these two fingers goes away one string and we add the first finger. That's not bad.
Ok, take some time and work on those transitions in the key of E.
This is our new root note, a B. For a B chord.
Ok, now in addition to the CAGED chords: C. A. G. E. D. You've got two more that let you play in two more keys.
We've now added the key of C because we know the F chord now. We've added the key of E because now we know a B chord.
Ok, that's going to cover a huge percentage of what you're going to do down the road in the first position.
It's time for a little bit more music theory now.
Up until this point all of the chords we've covered with one exception, maybe you've caught it.
All of them are what we call major chords.
This is a C chord, proper name C major, as opposed to a C seventh. Hear the difference there?
A seventh chord adds a little attribute to a chord that makes it sound like we're about to transition to something else. Listen to this.
We're playing along in the C chord, we're about to go to the F, hear that hint? Here it comes.
That's a seventh.
Any chord can have this happen but right now all I've taught you is the major chords with one exception and that's the very last one we did.
The difficulty in taking this C chord and sliding it down and fretting some notes here, there's not much good else we can do with the third string here.
Most people make that note right there like I taught you but what's actually happened is we've just made this a B seven chord.
This is not really a B chord. It's a B seven.
Really the nearest true B chord is a bar chord and we'll get to that later, this is A B seven, it works very nicely for the key of E.
So that's a seventh but everything else has been a major chord. This is a C major. This is an A major.
G major. E major and D.
Ok, there are varieties like sevenths and minors that we're going to get to before very long
but what I want you to understand though is that's the building blocks for the first position that we have so far, is major chords.