Altered chords

25 Altered Dominant Guitar Chords
- By Stef Ramin
- On 03/04/2018
- In Chords & Voicings
- 0 comments
What's An Altered Dominant Chord?

Altered dominant chords are used to bring tension and an outside flavor to jazz chord progressions. They generally resolved to an inside chord as the I or a substitute as iii or vi.

Altered chords have one or more notes lowered or raised by a half-step, in other words they contain one or more alterations. These alterations can be b9,#9, b5 (#11) and b13 (#5). Jazz musicians, composers and arrangers used them as substitutions for diatonic chords for adding more dissonance and spice up the harmony.

This guitar lesson provides 25 altered guitar chord shapes to understand how they are constructed and how to play them on guitar.

Continue reading