"Chasing" chords up the fretboard...

cacophony

good morning to all, *tips hat*. i wonder if any of you could help me with, what seems (to me at least) a `simple` request?. what i`m looking for is a simple, easy reference diagram of the whole fretboard showing the finger positions for all the chords playable after the 5th fret. i`ve searched the interweb for days and whilst there are hundreds, nay, thousands of diagrams purporting to show just this, they show fret markers, root notes etc etc, all of which make my head hurt. is there a simple `map` with the chords each in a separate colour, (so red for `A`, blue for `C` etc) which would guide me all the way to the `dusty end`?. i`ve tried learning the `caged` system and have worked out a lot of the positions on the board, but no matter how i try some of them just don`t sound "right"!. 

as i put in an earlier topic i have on here, when push comes to shove i don`t want to get bogged down in the theory of music, and it seems to me that an `E` chord made on the 9th fret by someone who`s spent many long hours studying the caged system by a flickering candle, sounds exactly the same as an `E` chord made by some lummox who simply memorised those positions from a diagram he got from the net...

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Roland

No diagram, but here's a suggestion. The four most common chord shapes for barring up the fret board are E and A, and their respective minors. You know which chord it is in any position from the bass note on the E or A string.  Once you know the basic shapes and positions then the next step is to learn 7th, 6th and 9th by changing one note at a time.

You can form barre chords using other chord shapes: C, D and G. Each has its uses, but they are less common in guitar music than chords based on the E and A shapes, and you might want to leave these for another occasion.

mike_l

As an exercise try playing Hey Joe (C-G-D-A-E) but use each veriation of each chord each time through.

So First time, C-G-D-A as normal 3rd/5th position Barre chords and E at each place up the neck.

Second C each place up the neck and so-on.

Might be boring, but it does work.

cacophony

thanks for the fast replies, appreciated. but, it`s these sort of techniques, "shift one place for every letter `E` in your surname" that have driven me close to the brink of insanity. i don`t want to sound like an ungrateful wretch (which i undoubtedly do!) but the plea for a simple, coloured (coloured in with a crayon if needs be!) map/diagram still stands.

on a purely practical footing, all barre chords are incredibly difficult for me, i have very small hands and really struggle, it isn`t a case of "keep on practising and you`ll get a stretch" as my fingers just don`t reach by anything up to an inch, if there were any techniques that could stretch my fingers that much, i`d have made a million selling the same technique elsewhere on the body via a mail-order course!.

but thanks again for taking the time to reply. i am grateful.

JAYJO

Are you playing above the 5th fret as the frets are closer. Try a capo and play triads.

BigMonka

I can't imagine any single diagram actually being useful for you as each fret would be in multiple chords so you'd end up with a fretboard covered in dots that you can't untangle to make anything helpful.

That's why things like the CAGED system exist, it breaks the neck down to allow you to find the chords through understanding rather than being bamboozled by dots on a page.

nickp

I think it would just be a morass of dots

why not do your own for each chord?  Sadly I agree the best way is to start with say the F chord and work your way through the shapes (caged again) but go slowly and do one note per week - so F one week, Bb the following week etc

jellyroll

I have an app on my phone (iphone) called Chordbank which is good....select a chord type - say E minor - and it shows you all the positions for that chord along the neck. 

imalone

There's a reason there are fret markers!
Even if you can't manage full barres (and they are easier at higher frets), the root notes for those two chord shapes are just the notes on the 6th (E shape) and 5th (A shape) strings.

Frets for natural notes:
E string
E (0), F(1), G(3), A(5), B(7), C(8), D(10)
A string
A (0), B(2), C(3), D(5), E(7), F(8), G(10)

Fret markers 3, 5 and 7 are natural root notes for major, minor and M/m 7 chord shapes for those two strings.
However you learn it (and I still hesitate if you throw a random one at me), the only way to deal with moveable chords is going to be to get the scale intervals learnt somehow. There are other chords that employ open strings that are not moveable, and there are moveable chords that aren't full barre chords. It's a bit like mental arithmetic, you can work out multiplications, but to be fast you need to know your times tables.
I'm not sure about CAGED as a way to learn notes on the board, because of the way it tries to construct a progressive structure downwards for each note, I find it easier to think of root notes on the 6th and then intervals across the board.

Intervals across the board, low string (6th) on left. I've started a row above the root note, so the first position is empty (it's just a 7).
     | 3  | 6  | 2   | 5b | 7
1   | 4  | 7b | 3b | 5  | 1
2b | 5b | 7  | 3   | 6b| 2b
2   | 5  | 1   | 4  | 6   | 2
3b | 6b| 2b | 5b | 7b | 3b
3   | 6  | 2  | 5   | 7   | 3

This looks like a mess, but there are anchors. Two down, two across is an octave, unless you cross 3rd to 2nd string. In standard tuning every interval that spans the 3rd and 2nd string needs an extra fret. Yes it's a rule you have to remember, but it's an unavoidable fact of the tuning that it breaks the pattern there.

Two frets down is a tone, straight across is a fourth, one across two down is a 5th, two across two down is an octave. This makes I - IV - V progressions with moveable chords quite easy, start with root on 6th, go across to a chord with root on 5th string for the IV then up 2 frets for the V.

Basically, learn your moveable chords with their root somewhere and then you can shift them up and down as you want.

cacophony

thanks all, i get what you mean about the sea of dots, but i`ve seen one `map` which just showed the one chord (think it was `C`) and all its locations. i went on the blokes website and he said he`d do the rest in order, but was suffering from ill health atm and was going into hospital soon to get it sorted. unfortunately that was in 2011 and it hasn`t been updated since.

and i like the sound of that i phone app, i`m off to do some research, (now where`s my daughter`s iphone?)

JAYJO

C = CEG . Find all the C notes and play CEG from there. To do this you need to know where the C E G notes are or what a 3rd and 5th interval looks like.. If you learn the notes on the fretboard and learn that a major triad is 1 3 5 and a minor is 1 b3 5. Then you can find the chords you need to play in the position you want to play them.

GuyBoden

JAYJO said:

C = CEG . Find all the C notes and play CEG from there. To do this you need to know where the C E G notes are or what a 3rd and 5th interval looks like.. If you learn the notes on the fretboard and learn that a major triad is 1 3 5 and a minor is 1 b3 5. Then you can find the chords you need to play in the position you want to play them.

Yes, the most common chords are just the Root, Third and Fifth notes of common scales, so if you know the fretboard and a few common scales, you can play most chords anywhere and in any inversion.

This is one of the reasons why knowing the fretboard and a few common scales makes guitar playing easier.