G7 Chord for 5-string Banjo
After you’ve tackled your major and minor chord formations, the next type of chord you want to learn is your 7th chord. Once you know this along with your major and minor chords, you can pretty much strum or roll along to any bluegrass song.
Banjo Chord: G7
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
G7 Chord Theory
Before you learn the 7th chord, you may want to learn the theory that goes with it (It’ll help you remember it). I’ll give you my own personal tool tip as well. A 7th (sometimes called a dominant 7th) chord is made by taking a major chord and adding a fourth note to it.
The Major chord formula is:
1-3-5
The chord formula for a 7th chord isn’t 1-3-5-7 like you’d think it would be. It turns out it is as follows:
1-3-5-b7
You take the 7th note of the corresponding scale and you FLATTEN it. Using a G Major scale (GABCDEF#). These notes are G-B-D-F. Now on to how we play this on the banjo.
G7 Chord Shape #1
If you look at the G major and then the G7, you’ll notice that the 1st string moves down a whole step (or two frets). Here is my tip for remembering 7th chords (It requires you to know where the 1-3-5 of each chord shape is, see my ultimate banjo chord guide above). Find the 1 of the chord and move it down a whole step. This ALWAYS hold true. The b7 is a whole step down from the root or one of the chord. With chord shape #1, the root is on the 1st string.
Now, you may be asking yourself this- I thought a 7th chord was four notes? It is, what I have done is removed the 4th string from the equation. If you are playing with others, the bass player will have the root (G). The guitarist and other instruments will also have this note as well. It’s not necessary to always play the root of the chord. In many cases, adding all four notes creates a less clear sound. I prefer to start students with the three finger chord shapes. Chord shape #1 has the 3-5-b7 inside of it. As long as you have the 3rd and b7 of the chord, it will sound like a 7th chord.
Once again, this is because the other instruments play the root. Furthermore, your ear has memory, so once the key or root note is established in the song, your ear remembers the G note, even when it’s not played (weird I know!).
G7 Chord Shape #2
This shape is the most difficult of the ones I’ll present. It’s more stretchy than the others. Use your pinky on the first string. Once again, notice that the root on the 2nd string moves down two frets. You should play the previous chord movement and this one, making sure that you can see the root of the chord moving down a whole step for both of them.
Once you grasp this, you will understand all of these shapes and be able to connect them clearly in your mind.
G7 Chord Shape #3
With this shape, make a barre chord at the 12th fret. Next, extend your pinky to the 15th fret. That’s all there is to this shape. What are you doing? This time, you have kept the root (on the 3rd string) and it is the fifth that’s removed. The 5th on the 1st string has been moved up to the b7th on the 1st string.
Why can we do this? The 5th is what’s called a non-essential tone. This is because it doesn’t determine if a chord is major or minor (the 3rd does). It doesn’t determine the quality of the chord, so we can remove it if we need to.
G7 Chord Shape #4
Chord shape #4 is a variation on shape #3. This time you are starting with the same barre chord, but you are moving the root down to the b7. You keep the 5th but the root is gone. Many books forget to show this one, but it’s one of my favorites. Certainly easier than Mr. Stretchy above. My banjo hero Allen Shelton was quite fond of this position.
G7 chord wrap up
These are not ALL of the the 7th chords possible on the banjo. However, these are the common ones. I have an exhaustive sheet of 7th chord shapes over on my Patreon website until the end of June 2023, if you’re interested.
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Want more elaborate chord colors in your playing? Check out my article on how to play 6th chords.
