Hey yall, I've been playing guitar for quite a few years. I'm a completely self taught musician for the most part. Anyway, all these years of playin, I just joined a church band about three years ago with a sixty voice gospel choir. And our Keyboard player is awesome! But I've never had to play so many slash chords in my life until I've been doing gospel music. I've asked around and done some research, but how exactly do I play a slash chord on guitar?

Left side = regular chord, right side = new bass note.

Usually a "slash chord" on the guitar is just a way of telling you which bass note to play. Sometimes those bass notes will be from outside the chord, but often they'll be from within the chord. So, if you were to play C/E, you'd play a C chord but make sure the low E string or the E at the 7th fret of the A string is in the bass. E is the major third in a C major chord, so really "C/E" is telling you how to organise your C chord.

There are plenty of common examples that people play without thinking about whether or not they're slash chords (which do sound slightly scary)... A/G where you have a basic A chord at the second fret and you play the G at the 3rd fret of the low E string... any time you let the E or A strings ring out while you move a chord shape up and down the neck (cheap flamenco sound)... D/F# where you're playing an open D chord but taking the F# from the high E string and moving it to the low E instead.

Somehow writing this stuff down makes it look more complicated than it is. Basically you just play the chord as you usually would, but you may need to free up a finger to add the bass note on the right side of the slash. Left side = regular chord, right side = new bass note.

Wow thanks.
Something i too have never understood. Its clear as day now though.

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No no and no

I used to be faintly troubled by them, too... more than half the time, it's effectively just telling you which inversion of the chord to play. That's useful information when playing with a keyboardist, as they're more likely to be voice-leading their way through a progression than playing "shapes" as we tend to on the guitar. From what I've seen, it's not that common to encounter genuine hybrids containing all the notes of both chords. Maybe in jazzier situations...

Mondo, that's correct. Jazz players often use a "slash" designation as a form of shorthand for notating complicated voicings.

If you were to see, for example, a D/C in a piano player's fake book, it probably wouldn't be a D with a C bass (which is usually what it means when you see a slash in a guitar songbook). It would be the six notes of a D major triad and a C major triad played together.... D, F#, A, C, E & G. In the key of D, it could be a D7+9+11.... or maybe a Dmaj2-sus4+7, depending on how you stack it

The name of the chord, or how you might think of it, could change based on the key or the chord you're substituting for... but it's just easier to remember - and see on the keyboard - if you think of playing a D triad under a C triad.

I learned this trick taking harmony lessons from a jazz piano guy many years back, and it cracked my head open to a new kind of experimentation... superimposing triads and figuring out what the chords have become is a great way to open your head to new harmonic concepts.

Make this short and sweet .If your not into slash chords find a piece on them as they really juice up your rhythem playing and usualy make great progressions with leading bass lines .Quick axample D/A-Ed/Bd-E/B THATS PLAYIND YOUR BASIC A SHAPED BAR CHORD STARTING FROM THE FIFTH FRET GOING TO THE SIXTH THEN TO THE SEVENTH ONE STRUM EACH SO THATS D-Ed-E. but you have A-Bd AND B being played on the sixth string E with it and thats the intro to AND THE WIND CRIES MARY

Thanks for the clarification, Slapchop. Back when I used to force myself to plough through George Van Eps' Harmonic Mechanisms For Guitar I had more of an idea of advanced harmonic concepts, but over time it's become reduced to "play the chord, stick a new bass note under it." I think partly because it's difficult for a guitarist to have six notes available at any one time unless a barre can be employed. I would find it more useful to see D7#9#11 written down, as I'd know then that the really important notes to hit would be the 3rd, 7th, #9th and #11th (F#, C, E#, G#)... and those four notes lie in a shape that I could take with my first three fingers leaving my fourth free for some embellishments... heh. Wish I could think that fast enough to play over changes. Often I wish I'd looked into keyboard more... imagine... all the notes are just laid out sequentially waiting for you! and you get ten fingers to play them with! Man!!

The building blocks of chords are a little tougher to visualise on the guitar, I feel, although for 7th chords you can get away with murder as long as you play that 3rd/7th tritone in the middle. Diabolis in Musica...I'd be lost without it...

Absolutely! That's precisely why I started playing keys back yonder... the keyboard makes obvious sense, but the fretboard is a maze. But what you play on one gets in on the other.

I can't think that fast either... that's why I spent my career recording, where you only have to get it right once.