chords/modes

ok so im learning right now and my guitar teacher wrote some chords along with what i am supposed to do with those chords. im not sure if he wanted me to learn those chords but thats not what this thread is about.

what my question is:

sholud i learn every single chord, or should i put my efforts into learning what make a chord major/minor/ aug/ dim/ sus/7/9/11/13 etc and learnig what notes are contained in the triads?

i dont have a problem doing the wwwork of learning the chords but i dont want to just be another walking chord dictonary.

Hi Broken,
I think the short answer to your question is, if you learn how to construct chords, from the basic triad, to the extensions (7ths, 9ths, #9, etc), then the inversions, you ultimately will be a walking encyclopedia of chords. And that's not a bad thing. It'll open up the fretboard for you, and you'll see all the "dots" connected. Something I'm still working on myself after many years of playing. jmho.

Well it depends on your teacher's teaching style.

You see, some teachers will make you learn a few chords and wait till your able to play them, then they will go into what makes the chords.

Others do the total opposite and teach you the chord construction then they show you how to play the chords.

It's very important that you sit down and talk a bit with your teacher to figure out what his teaching approach is. It is also important that you tell him if one way of learning is hard for you than the other.

If I take myself as an example, I learn much quicker if I learn how to play then learn what I'm playing. It falls into place a lot faster this way for me. Some of my friends guitar player are the opposite, they sit down with a book and are able to figure out the lesson without even picking up a guitar. I can't do that. I need to see, and physically play the material to make it sink in. It was a problem in school, I had a hard time with learning material that had no physical application.

We're all different and your teacher should take that into consideration.

Just let him know you're not sure what his asking and he'll tell you where he wants you to go from there.

it depends what kind of music you want to play

for folk and rock, it wont take too long to learn a more than functional chord vocabulary

for blues, it'll take slightly longer

for jazz, it will take you a lifetime

BUT

at a certain point in your playing, new chords will become familiar much quicker, and your knowledge of intervallic relationships between strings will help you create chords on the spot.

for example, the first time i saw a B7b5 (not a Bm7b5), I could read that it was a B dominant chord with a flatted fifth as an alteration. Since I knew a B dominant, and where the fifth was in relation to that shape, I simply slid my third finger back one fret and had it. So, a B7 with the B on the A string (from A to B string) is 2 4 2 4. F# is the 5 of B, and since I wanted a b5, i slid back the 4th fret D string (an F#) to produce and F, the b5. The chord now looked like 2 3 2 4.

In a similar fashion, you can add nines, elevens, thirteens, and their respective sharps and flats without much thought. This might sound harder than it is, but with a bit of practice, you'll get the hang of it.

When you learn a new set of chords, always make sure you know which chord tones are where (i.e., in a B7 2 4 2 4 shape, the chord tones are 1 5 7 3).

good luck.