30-day guitar challenge, day 20: Master chords with wide voicings

Fmaj7

30-day guitar challenge: This week's guitar chord challenge is mastering these finger-twisting variations on typical chords, and it's not for the faint-hearted!

The trick with these voicings is not to try putting a note on every string. You’ll be missing strings here and there, so they’re best played with your fingers.Here’s an Fmaj7.

Em7

Bit of a stretch, eh? This one should be a little bit easier. It’s the minor 7 equivalent of the same basic voicing.

D

Now, this one might be a bit more painful, but that’s because it’s from the encyclopaedic chord vocabulary of the mighty-handed Allan Holdsworth.

It’s a first-inversion D major, meaning that the 3rd (F#) is in the bass.

Am

We thought of making a minor version of that, but it didn’t sound very inspiring. Here’s a slightly different shape, which uses the same set of strings, but with the 5th in the bass (making it a second inversion).