Let’s be clear: there’s no such thing as an ‘acoustic guitar chord’. If a guitar has a standard fretboard, then, acoustic or electric, all chord shapes are fair game. However, some chords do sound ...

A normal C major chord is C-E-G, but you can easily change it to E-G-C, called the 'first inversion', or G-C-E, the 'second inversion' - the bass note has changed, but it's still the same chord, with ...

A study suggests that minor and major seventh chords are the happiest sounds in music, but today’s songwriters are ditching them in favour of simple minor chords. But why does this matter? We all love ...

Do you associate minor chords with sad music and major chords with happy music? If you do, you probably grew up surrounded by music that follows the basic rules of Western music theory. But not ...

Bob Dylan has rightly carved out his place at one of the most influential songwriters of the last 50 years. If you’re a fan of his work or not, you can escape the fact that he has written some ...

The "Neapolitan 6th" chord (N6) is another sonority whose definition is based on the triad that it makes, which is a vertical perspective that glosses over its actual horizontal function. It is ...

In my previous column, we looked at the difference between extended and altered chords, and I wanted to give some further examples and explanations of how altered chords work in practical terms. After ...