The main prerequisite for working out these shapes ‘on the fly’ is knowing the note names on the 6th and 5th strings up to roughly the 5th fret. This may seem like a lot of theory to play a simple chord, but there are some shortcuts to playing slash chords. the order of the D and A notes, and whether any of the notes are doubled). As with most chord symbols, a slash chord doesn’t tell you specifically which ‘inversion’ to play, (i.e. the notes D, F# and A) and ensure there is an F# note on the bottom, i.e. This means you should play a D major shape (i.e. In the examples I have not included a chord box shape- you could look these up, but an important part of the exercise is working out the shapes yourself!Ī chord symbol such as D/F# is read ‘D major over F sharp’. Perhaps unsurprisingly they are particularly prevalent in songs written by Paul McCartney.
The Beatles were real masters of using slash chords. I will illustrate each approach with an example from a Beatles song. In this article I will lay out a few ways to simply start reading and playing slash chords and why you might want to bother! This is great thing, since it means we can play along with our favourite tunes sooner, developing other skills such as changing between the basic chord shapes, strumming, rhythm etc. ‘Slash chords’ such as D/F# are one example, where one can mostly get away with completely ignoring the letter after the slash and songs will mostly sound ok. It makes sense to put some topics or techniques to one side to avoid being overwhelmed.
When learning to play guitar, or music in general, there is a seemingly limitless amount of material to cover. Learning about slash chords from The Beatles