Done. We now have the Superchord for a dominant 7th chord.
We’ve added the D form to the fingerboard. It follows the E form — and you can also recognise it as part of the C shape. The bass side (toward the nut) reads as a D form; the treble side (toward the bridge) reads as a C form.
Move one step further toward the bridge and you arrive at the A form — which is already sitting there one octave below inside this newly built Superchord. (Notice how the pattern begins and ends with the same configuration of tones, which is part of the A form.)
Every note in this pattern is a chord tone of a dominant 7th chord.
Roots, thirds, fifths, and flat sevenths.
1s, 3s, 5s, and â™7s.
These are your fail-safe notes. Whether you’re playing riffs, melody lines, double stops, or chord fragments — they will always be right.
Now the real work begins.
Break each form down into single notes. Keep the chord shapes in mind, but don’t grab them as grips. See them instead as maps of available notes.
Train your hands to move through them freely.
- Build short melodic ideas
- Slide into notes, slide out
- Move between adjacent forms
- Repeat a phrase in the next position
And most importantly: listen.
A great trick is to hum or sing the line out loud or in your head as you play them.
In the video, I’m playing through a Bâ™7 template. Try moving it up one fret to B, down one fret to A, up two to C, etc. Keep locking the template in with the fretboard markers.
What a jumble of notes! I'm sure there are dozens of ways to mentally organize this pattern of notes. I know I spent 15 years or so trying to 'see' it in my mind's eye. My eureka moment came one day when I was playing slide guitar in standard tuning, exploring the various positions. Bam! There it was. Plain as day. I wrote a book about it and that became an online course: PlaneTalk Online.
When it stops being fun, take a break!
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