How to Build G7 Chords on the Guitar

If you're just starting out on guitar, you'll benefit from chord building. This activity helps you figure out what goes into a chord. For a seventh chord, it's a little more complex than for your more familiar major and minor chords. For G7, we're renovating a G major into a seventh chord by changing the note recipe just a little bit. Here's how to build the most common "open" form of G7 on guitar.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Start out with your chromatic scale. The chromatic scale of a key is the seven notes that make up the major scale. For G, it's G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G.

2. Choose your notes for the "recipe" that makes up G7. For a G major chord, you would include the first, third and fifth scale notes, G, B, and D. For G7, you're adding a flatted seventh; the seventh scale note being F#, a flatted 7 is an F.

3. Begin with your ring finger on the third fret of the lowest string of the guitar, the low E string. That's your first scale note, G.

4. Place your middle finger on the second fret of the A string (second string from bottom, one string above E). This is your B note, your third scale note.

5. Leave the middle two strings open. The D string is the third string from the bottom, and D is the fifth scale note. The G string, the next string up from D, represents a repetition of the first scale note, G.

6. Put your index finger on the first fret of the high E string. This is your flatted seventh, F. This note makes the G7 chord sound.

Tips & Warnings

• To hear how the seventh chord sounds, play G major and G7 back to back. You'll hear how flatting the seventh gives you the sound that's good for a transitional chord in a major chord progression.