{"id":2555,"date":"2019-12-24T13:19:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T11:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/?p=2555"},"modified":"2025-07-14T08:38:42","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T06:38:42","slug":"playing-chords-on-three-strings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/?p=2555","title":{"rendered":"Playing chords on three strings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beginners usually start learning chords with open strings, i.e. at the first couple of frets, and covering all strings. Most important of these are the E and A chord forms, as they can be played as barr\u00e9 chords and thus moved up the neck to get other chords. The first barr\u00e9 chord taught is usually the F chord, which uses the E form moved up one fret.<\/p>\n

I then stumbled upon quite a number of songs that make use of mostly the D, G, and B strings, e.g. Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones. At the fifth fret, this provides three possibilities for major chords:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’ve circled the root note of each – the first two are inversions, the third is a standard A chord, derived from the E form but omitting both E strings and the A string. Especially the combiation of the first and second chord form is often found, as it allows for easy switching between the first and fourth, e.g. C and F, as pictured above. The fourth (sub dominant) has a special meaning in harmonics. Brown Sugar<\/em> makes extensive use of this.<\/p>\n

These three forms also mean that there are three positions on the neck where you can play a given chord, e.g. the A chord (root note circled):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This can of course be applied to all other chords, too. You can use this to minimize your movement along the neck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beginners usually start learning chords with open strings, i.e. at the first couple of frets, and covering all strings. Most important of these are the E and A chord forms, as they can be played as barr\u00e9 chords and thus moved up the neck to get other chords. The first barr\u00e9 chord taught is usually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[102],"tags":[65],"class_list":{"0":"post-2555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-guitar","9":"czr-hentry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/dgb.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/plKIk-Fd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2558,"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions\/2558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wittwer.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}