guitarist playing custom made jazz guitar

Drop 2 chords are very popular guitar voicings which conveniently lay across four adjacent strings. They are especially popular in jazz guitar circles as they work well for general accompaniment (‘comping’) and also for chord melody playing. Drop 2 chords are also employed in other guitar styles and for example, many Country and Blues guitarists use them. 

In the musical examples below I have illustrated Drop 2 chord voicings for four common chord types: Min7, Maj7, Dominant 7th and Min7b5. Each of these chord types have been constructed from a root note of G so that you can compare the voicings next to each other on the fingerboard. Fingerings should be fairly easy to figure out from the diagrams, but play whatever feels comfortable to you. With some of the chord shapes there is more than one possible fingering. Practice each chord type up and down the fingerboard and then repeat using the other chord types until you have them all memorised.

All the chord forms above are played on the top four strings, but you can also construct Drop 2 chords within the middle four strings and also on the lower four strings of the guitar. I’ll cover these other chord voicings in a future lesson.

Here is a PDF file of the Drop 2 Chords illustrated above: Drop 2 Chord Forms (Top 4 Strings) 

Here is an audio file so that you can hear them too:

Btw – To help you practice in a more musical context, I’ve added some backing tracks below for each chord type and this should help you to practice the Drop 2 chords.

Here’s a backing track for Gmin7:

Now for G7 (with a bit of a shuffle added!…)

Next up is Gmaj7: (smooth!…)

Finally here’s Gm7b5:

Have fun!