C7 Chord Guitar Diagrams, Finger Position Charts & Photos

C7 chord guitar diagrams, finger position charts and photos. Everything you need to know to play a C7 chord on your guitar.

C7 Chord Guitar Finger Position Diagrams

The following diagrams show you how to play an C7 chord in several fretboard positions. Open position and movable barre chord shapes are shown.

Want to learn more chords? You can download a printable guitar chords book here: Guitar Chords eBook

Open Position C7 Chord Shape

This is one of the most common ways of playing a C7 guitar chord. Finger position numbers are shown. The photo below the diagram shows the chord being played.

C7 Chord Guitar Photo — The open position C7 chord shown above being played.

C7 Barre / Movable Chord Shapes

Below you'll find two other ways of playing a C7 guitar chord. They're both 'barre chords'–sometimes known as a bar chords–in which the first finger is placed over the strings to hold down the notes on more than one string.

The first C7 chord is based on the open position A7 chord, but played 3 frets higher with a barre.

C7 Barre Chord Guitar — C7 Barre Chord 1

The second shape is based on the open position E7 chord.

C7 Bar Chord Guitar — C7 Barre Chord Guitar 2

Dominant Seventh Chords

The full name for a C7 chord is 'C seventh' (or, to be even more precise, C dominant seventh).

Seventh chords contain 4 notes (in guitar chords each note may appear more than once in different octaves).

The notes are: The root note, the major third, the fifth, and the minor 7th.

The first three notes are the same as those in a major chord. The addition of the minor 7th note gives the seventh chord its characteristic 'expectant' sound.