This week's Guitar Chord Of The Week is a dominant eleventh chord shape. This is a common voicing of the 11th chord. It is played with the root note on the lowest (6th) string. Dominant eleventh chords are nice-sounding chords that can be used in place of standard dominant seventh (7) chords.
Read on to find out more about eleventh chords and to practice playing this shape in an example chord progression...
Eleventh Chord
This eleventh chord shape is easy to play and has a nice 'open' sound. It can often be played instead of a standard dominant 7th chord to produce a subtler dominant effect.
Eleventh Chords Theory
Eleventh chords are dominant chords, and are most often used to introduce a major chord with a root a perfect fifth lower. For example, a G eleventh chord would often come before a C major chord (G dominant chord is the dominant fifth in the key of C major).
You can read more about the relationships between chords here: Guitar Chord Theory.
Dominant eleventh chords are constructed by extending a standard dominant seventh chord by two additional notes, the ninth and the eleventh notes. See below for information on how an eleventh chord is constructed:
1. Major Chord Triad: G B D
2. Add seventh note to create dominant seventh: G B D F
3. Add ninth note to create dominant ninth: G B D F A
4. Add eleventh note to create dominant eleventh: G B D F A C
In this week's Guitar Chord Of The Week, the eleventh chord shape, when played at the third fret, is notated thus:
This voicing of the eleventh chord contains the following notes: G, F, A, C
It omits the B and D notes, which gives this version of the 11 chord a nice open sound.
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Eleventh Chord Progression
Experiment playing the 11 chord in the following chord progression. This is a version of the common jazz turnaround ii V I VI7. This week's chord shape is used twice, once as a G11 (when played at 3rd fret) and once as an A11(when played at the 5th fret).
Other Chord Shapes Used In This Progression:
Conclusion
We hope that you have enjoyed playing this eleventh chord shape. If you want to be notified of each new chord of the week - a great way of building up your chord knowledge - then please subscribe to our newsletter.
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See last week's Guitar Chord Of The Week, the very cool major / minor seventh chord.
