How to instantly turn 5 chords into 500 and never need a chord chart again

This video shows how, if you learn two things about five chords you already know, you can instantly add hundreds of chords to your vocabulary without ever needing to consult a chord chart again. The companion cheat sheet is available above.

Once you've watched it, put it to work in the Voicing Finder — a Gold-tier tool where you type any chord and get playable shapes back, so you can see the five templates turning into the hundreds.

Cowboy Chord Superpowers

As beginners, almost all guitarists learn the same handful of “cowboy chords” — usually a few standard open position major and minor triads, and sometimes a 7 chord or “sus4” thrown in for good measure. And then over time, as we learn more songs, we usually build up a repertoire of a couple dozen open-position chords, each learned a la carte.

But what many guitarists don’t realize is that nearly all of those chords can be easily created from five of the most basic chords: C, A, G, E, and D.

The key to repurposing these chords is knowing where to find the roots and thirds in each fingering, and knowing the recipes for converting one chord “flavor” into another.

Every chord has a “formula” — a list of intervals relative to the chord’s root. You don’t need to know the details of this (see my video on Intervals for more info), but in short, every interval name is derived from the major scale. Here it is laid out on one string:

An interval of a Major 2nd is just the distance between the first and second notes of the major scale (i.e., 2 frets). A Major 3rd is just the distance between the first and third notes (i.e., 4 frets). The same applies to the Major 6th (9 frets) and 7th (11 frets). 4ths (5 frets) and 5ths (7 frets) are called “Perfect” rather than Major. Just roll with it.

To make a major interval into a minor interval, just shorten the distance by one semitone (one fret). That’s all you need to know about intervals for this lesson.

In all of the diagrams in the video and in this cheat sheet, I have indicated roots as red circles with a “1” in them. Thirds are green diamonds. They’ll have a “3” inside if they’re major thirds, and a “♭3” (for “flat 3”) if they are minor thirds. Fifths are blue squares with a “5” inside. 7ths, 4ths, and 2nds will be yellow circles with the corresponding number inside. We’re not covering any chords with 6ths in this lesson, so that’s all the signage we need.

Changing the flavor of a chord

We can use the CAGED triads to easily create seven more flavors of chords. We just have to know the right recipes. In addition to the interval spellings and the usual way the chord names are written, I’ve included the “semitone spacings,” which are simply the semitone distance (number of frets on one string) from the root to each note in the chord.

A guitar usually has six (or more) strings, and each of these chords has 2-4 notes. When you play a chord, you can repeat each note as many times as you want, as long as you play every one on at least one string. It’s worth knowing that as a rule, chord voicings sound better if you don’t double the 3rd.

The chart on the next page displays the results of modifying each of the CAGED chords to create examples of their (playable and useful) chord flavors.

Note that you should not use the charts in this cheat sheet as a reference when you need to play a new chord. Instead, learn the rules for converting from the major triad to the other flavors, and know where the roots and thirds are in each one so that you can figure out the chord voicings on your own. The charts are here so that you can study the process of modifying the chords and check your work while you’re learning this.

Using a Capo

A capo is a handy tool for transposing. It allows us to use the fingerings from our open chords and shift them to a different key, but the capo doesn’t change the pitch of any notes. No matter where you place it, the 12th fret of the E string is still an E in standard tuning.

So the key to using a capo is knowing the names of the notes on the fretboard and knowing where to find the roots inside the chord shapes.

As an example, if we place the capo at the fifth fret, and play an open “C” chord shape, we’re actually playing an F Major triad because the roots fall on F notes:

And if we switch to an “E” chord shape and lower the third, we’re actually playing an A minor triad:

This is especially important to know when you’re playing with other musicians. If you call these “C” and “Em” chords when talking to your pianist or bass player, they may think you’re crazy.

Barre chords

A “barre” chord is simply using your index finger in place of a capo. This is frequently taught for the “E” shape (e.g., the 1st position F major chord shape) and the “A” shape (e.g., B major and B minor at the 2nd fret, and C# minor at the 4th fret), but the technique works across the entire fretboard and with all five CAGED chords. The “C”, “G”, and “D” shapes are a little harder to play across all six strings, so we often play just a portion of the full shape.

The chart on the next page displays the results of modifying each of the CAGED chords to create all of the (playable and useful) barre chord flavors.

Closed-form triads

Closed-form triads are usually taught separately from cowboy chords, but as you’ll see, they come directly from the CAGED shapes. For example, the three inversions of the G major triad that can be played on strings 1-3 come from the E, C, and A shapes:

The same is true on strings 2-4:

On strings 3-5, the first-inversion voicing comes from the G shape:

On the lowest strings, the first-inversion voicing comes from a version of the D shape:

It’s not very useful to explicitly memorize these relationships, but it can be instructive to recognize them. My video on the CAGED system and triads explains how to transform these closed-form major triad inversions into minor, augmented, and diminished triads, so that might be a good video to check out next.