 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuja and I'm here today with MusicTeacher.com and in this video we're going to talk about playing chords while using your thumb. All the tones you're hearing in this video are coming from my PRS S2 Studio, which is plugged into the Blackstar Studio 10 6R6 that you see behind me there. The amp is mic'd with a Luit Audio LCT 440 condenser microphone. So when it comes to playing chords on the guitar, we are pretty much taught from day one to use our fingertips on our fratting hand. But somewhere along the line you may experience some guitar players using their thumb for this and you may be wondering why? So there are some benefits that come with using your thumb for existing chords you already know. The main one being it frees up your little finger to add additional chord extensions. So if you're a fan of guitar players like Jimi Hendrix or John Mayer, this is a big component in their guitar style. There's a video on the Blackstar YouTube channel which goes into this playing style in great detail. So go check that out once you're done here as well. You can learn some riffs in that sort of Hendrixy style using thumb chords. So what we're going to do in this video is we're going to take five very common chord types and learn how to play them using your thumb. So to do that we need to break the chord down into two main components. First one is the root note. This is the note that the thumb is going to be playing. So my thumb is going to be coming over the top of the guitar neck like this and playing a note on the low E string. This is the root note of my chord. So if you know any theory with chords, the root note is the note that gives the chord its identity. It's the lowest pitch note in the chord. So this is going to be my starting point for building a chord. Likewise if I was playing a full bar chord, my root note is again that note on the low E string. But this time I'm just playing that note with my thumb. So you do need to know your way around the low E string at least to make this work for you. The second part of this is going to take place between the D and B strings and this is a triad. So this is a three note chord. So we're going to be starting off with a major chord with a major triad. So the first thing we're going to play is a major chord and it's going to sound like this. So let's break that down and see what I'm doing there. So I'm playing the fifth fret on the low E string with my thumb. This is an A note. So I'm going to be basing this around an A major chord. Now for the A string I don't actually need to play this string. So with my thumb I'm also muting the A string. Just resting lightly on that to stop it ringing. Then I'm playing this A major triad. So that's going to be the seventh fret on the D string, the sixth on the G, and the fifth on the B. And once again the underside of my first finger is muting the high E string. So I've got this combination of the root note and the major triad and the A and E strings are both muted. So if you were playing a Jimi Hendrix or John Mayer style thing you may see the little finger coming into play here which allows you to add all these different chord and melody extensions. It's a great way to sort of take your rhythm playing to that next level. As I said there is a video that goes into that in great detail so go check that out once you're done learning the chord shapes. So the major chord is basically the root note and a major triad. The major triad is the major chord in its purest form. So we've got the root note again here on the D string which is the octave of the lowest root note we played. The note on the G is the major third. That's the note that makes this a major chord and then the note on the B string is the fifth. So that's one, one three five. If you know your scale intervals and your chord intervals that's where that bit of theory is coming from but if you don't know that don't worry too much just think about this as a series of shapes. So now we're going to turn this major chord into a minor chord. So again if you know your chord theory already this will be a pretty easy transition but if you don't don't worry just think about this as a shape. So to turn any major chord into a minor chord we need to flatten the third. So I said that this note here on the G was my major third. So to flatten that I need to drop it by the pitch of one fret or one semitone so that takes this note here on the sixth fret down to the fifth fret which would then be my minor third which gives me this chord. So from the outset that may be a little difficult to see what I'm doing there so I'm still playing the root note on the low E string with my thumb. I'm still playing the octave root there on the D string with my third finger but now instead of using my middle finger for the G and my first finger for the B I'm actually barring across the fifth fret on both the G and B there with my index finger because I've dropped that major third down a fret to make this minor so major minor. Same rules apply here because my little finger is free I can still do those Henry C Mary style chord embellishments but in its core form that is a minor chord with the thumb. So strictly speaking now that you know the major minor chords you can move those around all around the low E string because you can basically choose which chord you want to play by choosing where your root note is so you could play a C minor or an F sharp major if you wanted to. Just move that around based on your knowledge of the low E string. Now we're going to dive into seventh chords because seventh chords are also very very useful to know so we're going to start with a dominant seven. So a dominant seven chord is essentially a major chord but we're taking the octave here and we're changing it for this note here which is known as a flat seven so again don't worry if you don't know the theory think about this like a shape. So this chord shape I'm still playing that root note with my thumb now you can play this two different ways you can play this like a D chord but rooted on the D string so in this case I'm playing five on the D five on the B six on the G this gives me an A dominant seven or I can kind of go for that minor bar chord bar there where I'm barring with my first finger and placing my middle finger on the sixth fret of the G so to do the bar I'm barring the fifth from the D string down and adding that middle finger on that. So the dominant seven is actually a four note chord so even though I am playing a triad and a root note here the triad doesn't contain a duplicate of the one note so it's the one the flat seven the major third and the fifth so that's going to be my building blocks now for a minor seven or a major seven so to turn this into a minor seven I just need to flatten that major third to a minor third so it's one flat seven major third just need to drop that down so what I'm now doing is I'm playing the root with the thumb and barring the fifth fret on the D G and B strings so that's one flat seven minor three and five so there's my dominant seven and my minor seven to turn this into a major seven I simply go back to my dominant seven position but now I need to take that flat seven and just turn it into a natural seven by raising in a semitone so I'm slightly changing the shape here I'm now playing the sixth fret on the D the sixth fret on the G the fifth on the B and the root with my thumb so it's one seven major third and fifth so there you have five main chord types that you can play with your thumb which frees up your little finger for some chord embellishments and extensions so let's just run through those one more time if you didn't understand the theory don't worry too much just think about them as a series of shapes these are transposable shapes which means you can move them anywhere you want because the root note is always going to be on the low E string so we started off with major chords minor chords then we looked into dominant sevens minor seven and then major seven so with those new thumb chord variations on existing chords you can give your chord progressions a new lease of life and add some melodic extensions by following some of the guidelines in that Hendrix style video I told you about earlier on as well thank you guys for watching I hope you've enjoyed this lesson let me know down below in the comments how you've gotten on with using your thumb for chords and what benefits that has brought to your playing style if you are just getting started with this let me know how you're getting on because I always find it fascinating how people find it when they start integrating their thumb into their chord work because it's not a concept we're taught early on as guitar players so it'll be great to hear how you guys are finding that and yeah like I said let me know down below what you think don't forget to check out the black star amplification youtube channel for more free video lessons just like this and if you're looking for a guitar teacher in your local area please go check out musicteacher.com there's a network of great teachers all around the UK waiting to help you guys out thank you so much for watching and I'll see you very soon