Drop 2 Guitar Chord Voicings

Free your fingers from 'Bar Duties' and give them something exciting to do by learning these must-know drop 2 guitar chord voicings. 

The trouble with the basic guitar bar chords is that they become extremely limiting if you want to make quick chord changes or play different chord voicings. One way around this is to start learning different ways to play chords... and there's nothing better than learning how to play drop 2 guitar chord voicings.

They give you 4 different ways (voicings) to play the same chord.

Drop 2 chords are a very popular alternative to bar chords. They are used by blues players a lot, country, folk, rock and jazz players too. In fact, these are must-know chord shapes for any guitarist worth his salt.

What Are Drop 2 Guitar Chords?

What Are Drop 2 Chords?... Drop 2 chords are basically made by dropping the 2nd voice down to the bottom of the chord. For example: A Cmajor7 chord has the notes C E G B. To make a drop 2 chord, we take the G and drop it to the bottom. So the voicing would be G C E B. There are 4 inversions of that chord.

Now the beauty of these chord voicings is that they are 4 note (7th) chords. But there is no doubling up of notes as in bar chords. They also free up the first finger from ‘bar duties’ to make movement between chords more subtle and fast. With these voicings you will always find the next chord is right under your fingers or just up or down one fret.

A Neat Drop 2 Guitar Chord Trick... Another neat trick is to learn these chords with just the top 3 notes. Drop the bottom note altogether. Play around with them and see what you can come up with. Great for playing blues and jazz chord licks.

FREE Drop 2 Guitar Chord PDF Downloads 

Right-click here to download your Drop 2 Guitar Chord Voicings eBook.

As well as the drop 2 chord diagrams, there are some practice tips too.

Right-click here to download your free Guitar Practice Schedule Adobe pdf eBook.

Using a practice schedule to keep track of what you need to practice and when makes learning more productive. Requires some self-discipline.

Recommended Books on Drop 2 Guitar Chords

Use Drop 2 Chords For Soloing Too... Learning these drop 2 chord shapes thoroughly is also a great aide to targeting notes to play in your solos. You know the next chord coming up, you visualize the notes on the fretboard and ‘target’ those notes in your solos. Thinking this way gets you into a more linear, or, along (not across) the neck approach to playing. This helps avoid the problem of getting stuck in a box or a single scale pattern that is played in one position across the fretboard. It gets you moving up and down the neck. Watch the pro’s, you’ll see they do this a lot.

Drop 2 Chord Diagrams... I have given you diagrams for the voicings on the top 4 (E B G D) and middle 4 (B G D A) strings. If you wish, you can work them out yourself for the bottom 4 strings. Although, they aren’t really used that much because you are getting into the bass player’s territory and playing these chords can possibly muddy up the bass section of your band. You don’t really want to be competing with the bass player for the bottom end. So, these chords are usually avoided.