Ch.1 (More Guitar Chords & Accompaniment)

Although you only practiced moving six forms of barre chords for each string, virtually any chord is movable either by using the barre technique or by simply shifting the same chord shape to an appropriate place. For example, grab your guitar and play a C6 chord (note: C6 was introduced in 4-2 of the previous book). Now, without changing the chord shape or fingerings, simply move it up one fret where your 4th finger, pressing the root of the chord, will be on the 4th fret of the 5th string. As you may have already guessed, you are now holding a Db6 chord. It is exactly the same chord shape as C6, but it’s placed an 1/2 step up and hence the root of the chord is now Db instead of C. When you play Db6, the open strings, 6th and 1st, should be muted or you will hear some dissonance. The "Muting Technique" section of the next page will show you how to deaden the unwanted strings.

Note that the fingerings of some open chords are changed slightly in order for the 1st finger to be used as a barre. The common fingerings of these open chords can be found in the previous book.

MUTING TECHNIQUE
There are a few ways to prevent unwanted strings from ringing:

Avoid hitting the string or

Lightly touch the string to deaden the sound (3 ways):

1) With your left-hand thumb:
As an example, first play the Am chord on your guitar. Up until now, we avoided the X-marked 6th string simply by not playing it. That is fine as long as you don’t hit the string. Sometimes, however, especially when you strum enthusiastically, you will hit it by accident. To avoid the unwanted sound, you can extend your left-hand thumb from the neck, roll it a little towards the 6th string and lightly touch the string so that it will sound muted even if you strum it (method shown in the picture below). Be careful not to press the string or it will produce a sound instead of being deadened. Depending on the size of your hand, the width of your guitar neck, and what kind of chord you are pressing, you may not always find this technique to be applicable or practical, but it is still powerful and well utilized by many players. Note: As shown in the D7 picture, you can even mute more than one string simultaneously!

Am
(thumb muting
the 6th string) D7
(thumb muting 6th
& 5th strings)

(An excerpt from More Guitar Chords and Accompaniment )