Chord voicings on guitar: same notes, different sound

A chord is a set of notes. A voicing is where you put them. C major is C, E and G wherever you play it, but the guitar lets you stack those three notes in many orders, in many registers, with some of them doubled. Each arrangement is a voicing, and each one sounds different: full or thin, dark or bright, close to the bass or above it. Once you hear that, a chord stops being one shape to memorize and becomes a choice.

Chord, shape, voicing: three different things

The open C chord plays five notes for a three-note chord: C and E appear twice. That doubling is part of its voicing, and part of why it sounds so full.

One chord, six voicings: C major across the neck

Every shape below sounds only C, E and G. Codes read from the low E string to the high E; the notes column reads in the same order.

Play them one after another and listen. The notes never change; the sound does, a lot. The open voicing spreads its notes wide and lets them ring. The compact one keeps them close. The high ones leave the bottom of the sound empty, which is exactly what you want when a bass guitar or a piano left hand is already there.

What actually changes from one voicing to another

• The bass note. The lowest note anchors the sound. With the root there, the chord sounds settled; with another chord tone there, it is an inversion and sounds lighter or more in motion.
• The top note. The highest note is the one the ear follows from chord to chord, almost like a melody. Two voicings of the same progression can sound smooth or jumpy depending only on their top notes.
• The register. Low voicings are warm and heavy; high ones are bright and light. Same chord, different place in the mix.
• Close or spread. Notes packed within an octave sound tight. Notes spread across two octaves sound open and wide.
• Doubled notes and open strings. Doubling the root strengthens the chord; open strings ring longer than fretted ones and add shimmer.

A small example you already play: G as 320003 and as 320033. The only difference is the B string, open (B) in the first, fretted at 3 (D) in the second. Same chord, one note swapped, and the second version sounds a little more solid because the top two strings both play the fifth and the root.

The smallest voicings: triads on the top three strings

Three strings, three notes, nothing doubled. On the G, B and high E strings, C major has three voicings close together, one for each note on the bottom.

Respectively G, C, E; then C, E, G; then E, G, C. These little shapes are what a second guitarist plays while the first one strums open chords, and what you reach for when a full chord would be too much. Learning them for the major and minor chords of one key is one of the fastest ways to make a simple song sound arranged.

Voicings and the CAGED system

Four of the C voicings above are CAGED shapes: the open C shape (x32010), the A shape (x35553), the E shape (8 10 10 9 8 8) and the D shape (x x 10 12 13 12). The fifth, the G shape, plays the full chord as 875558, a stretch most players use only in part: its top four strings are the xx5558 above. Together the five shapes give you one full voicing of the same chord in each region of the neck, which is exactly what the CAGED system organizes. Learn one chord through all five, and the same map works for every major chord.

You do not have to play all six strings of any of them. The most musical voicings are often three or four strings taken from inside a CAGED shape, like the compact x3555x, taken from the A shape. The barre chords page covers the two full shapes most players learn first.

How to choose a voicing

To find a voicing of any chord yourself, you need to know where its notes are. The notes on the fretboard page maps them, and every chord on the site, with its notes and shapes, is listed on the guitar chords page.