Watch the Blues Chord Voicings online guitar lesson by Jeff McErlain from Blues Survival Guide: Rhythm Edition
We can never have enough chord voicings in our bag. Here I will show you the basic dom7 voicings to altered chords. Does A7b9 b13 make your head spin when you see it? Have no fear, it's easy! A Dominant 7 chord is made up of a root, 3rd, 5th and b7 of a scale the tensions are just the notes in between those pitches. For example G7 is G,B,D,F, and comes from a C major scale. Therefore the notes in between our chord tones are A,C, and E or 2nd, 4th, and 6th degrees of the scale. If we want to add them into out chord we bring them up an octave and they become 9,11, and 13. We call these NATURAL tensions because they occur naturally in the key. An altered tension is when those same notes are changed (altered) to become b9,#9, b5, and b13. It is essential that we keep the 3rd and b7 of the dominant 7 chord, this is the tritone that I will explain in detail in the next segment!