Hi!  First off, I just wanna say that this is one of the biggest helps, for the guitar, one the web that I have found.  Keep it up!  I have always wanted to play the guitar, and so I finally got one, and now I'm teachin' myself to play. 

Now onto the sub...Can somebody out there help me by tellin' me how to create your own chords?  I have played the piano for a long, long time; so I do know everything about creating chords and whats needed.  But I also know that the guitar chords are slightly different from the piano.  I have tried using my piano knowledge to create chords on the guitar, but it's not working like I thought. 

Also, any other advice would be greatly appreciated.  I think the guitar is awesome, and it's a whole lot easier than I've heard.

Not to demean your efforts on creating chords but most likely any chords you discover probably already exist.  If you want to learn different chords, when looking up songs instead of learning the song learn the chords and try to alter them a little to make them minor or major.  Good luck!

If you have learned a decent amount of music theory..you should have no problem figuring out chords on the guitar. If you know how to make a chord on piano..as in knowing the notes..you can make them on guitar too..sometimes you will need to use inversions on the guitar though,since it isn't all layed out in front of you like the piano.

Hey guitar-n-away --

On the subject of using your piano knowledge to make chords on the guitar:
One way to think about it is to consider the guitar to be like six piano keyboards laid side by side, offset by
three white keys (except between the G and the B strings, where it's two white keys). If you know the names
of the strings - E - A - D - G - B - E -- you should be able to figure out the name of any note on any fret and relate it to your keyboard knowledge* and play any chords that you want to (as long as the notes aren't too close
together, so that you can play them on adjacent strings).

* -- that is, if you know the names of the notes on the keyboard. If you don't know the names of the notes on the keyboard, then some music lessons are in order.

The close voicings that you use on the piano often don't work on the guitar. For instance, you might play a complete C-Major-Seven chord on the piano like this:
C-E-G-B
(on the guitar x3200x )
and while you can play this one on the guitar, it's much more common to find the 3rd taken out of the middle and
put up on top like this:
C---G-B--E
x3x000
or
x3545x

This is a voicing-type that works much more reliably on the guitar.

--  jack


--- jack

guitar_n_away wrote:

Hi!  First off, I just wanna say that this is one of the biggest helps, for the guitar, one the web that I have found.  Keep it up!  I have always wanted to play the guitar, and so I finally got one, and now I'm teachin' myself to play. 

Now onto the sub...Can somebody out there help me by tellin' me how to create your own chords?  I have played the piano for a long, long time; so I do know everything about creating chords and whats needed.  But I also know that the guitar chords are slightly different from the piano.  I have tried using my piano knowledge to create chords on the guitar, but it's not working like I thought. 

Also, any other advice would be greatly appreciated.  I think the guitar is awesome, and it's a whole lot easier than I've heard.

...one method (of literally 1,000's!) is to memorize the DEGREE values (numbers) of the notes in each of the five basic different chord "shapes" (ie: CAGED system), for instance here's the E-shape chord and each note's degree number (o=open string):

Eo--- E (root)
Bo--- B (5th degree)
G|1-- G# (3rd degree)
D|-2- E (root)
A|-2- B (5th degree)
Eo--- E (root or 1)

...an example: to "make" an E minor (Em) chord, you simply "lower" the 3rd a HALF-step (1 fret)...by 'lifting' the finger that's fretting the G# note (ie: the note on fret 1 of the G3 string).

...Why learn the DEGREES instead of actual NOTES? The DEGREE of a chord shape is always the same, it never changes as the NOTES do...when you change keys!

...another example: to "make" an Eadd9 chord, you simply "raise" any one of the root notes a FULL-step (2 frets), but usually this chord uses the treble-string E, so you simply use your little finger to fret the 9th degree note (commonly simplified to just "9") on fret 2 of the E1 string, like this:

E|-2- F# (9)
Bo--- B (5)
G|1-- G# (3)
D|-2- E (R)
A|-2- B (5)
Eo--- E (R)

...why is it named "Eadd9" and not just "E9"? The "add" means that only the 9th degree note has been added to the chord with NO other changes to the chord; where-as an "E9" implies the inclusion of a dominant 7th note beneath the 9th note, ie: 9 = 7 & 2.

...Notice here that 2/9, 4/11 and 6/13 are "identical" notes an octave apart...the 2, 4, 6 notes are called "closed" (within same octave) notes, while the 9, 11, 13 notes are called "upper" (an octave ABOVE) notes. Since guitar strings and piano keys don't coincide, the PIANO rule that "true" 9, 11, 13 notes must be an octave ABOVE the ROOT note is typically ignored by guitar players; hence the simple rule:

7 & 2 = 9
7 & 4 = 11
7 & 6 = 13

...this is certainly NOT the ONLY way to do it, but it works for me...and possibly will for you too.