Essential R&B Chord Voicings Every Guitarist Should Know

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:05][music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Today I'll be showing you some of the chord voicings I used in that playing example. Now the song of course is Saving All My Love for You by Whitney Houston and I focused mainly on the verse section.

[00:01:26]The chord progression is a fairly common R&B progression with a few interesting twists and turns that we'll talk about.

[00:01:33]I'll be showing you some of my favorite voicings and ideas when playing an R&B tune like this. If you'd like the tabs of everything that I played in the playing example, as well as the backing track, well those are available on my Patreon and over there I post a lot of exclusive content in this style as well as smooth jazz, straight-ahead jazz and blues. All right, let's jump right in.

[00:01:54]This song is in the key of A major and the first part of the verse is a 1-6-2-5 chord progression. So, that would be A major 7, the one.

[00:02:03]The six chord, F sharp minor 7.

[00:02:09]The two chord, B minor 7.

[00:02:14]And the five chord, E7. Here, I'm going to play it as E7sus.

[00:02:21]And I'll be showing you voicings and ideas for all those chords. So, the first chord, A major 7, you can use your drop two voicings.

[00:02:31]>> [music] [music] [music] >> All right, so all those will work. You can also play a more in the middle of the guitar voicings like this.

[00:03:00]>> [music] >> You can also play an A major 9 by using a slash chord, E over A.

[00:03:13]That's a voicing I use a lot.

[00:03:15]>> [music] >> There's no third in that chord, so it sounds quite open.

[00:03:26]You can play it here.

[00:03:31]You can add the root A.

[00:03:35]>> [music] >> You can also grab the third, C sharp.

[00:03:45]>> [music] >> You can also play some R&B stops in fourths like this.

[00:03:55]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Some more double stop ideas.

[00:04:30]All right, next chord F sharp minor 7. I may play F sharp minor 9.

[00:04:34]>> [music] >> Here.

[00:04:44]>> [music] >> You can play some ideas from this shape.

[00:05:00]Hammer-ons and pull-offs.

[00:05:03]>> [music] [music] >> Next chord B minor 7. You can play B minor 9.

[00:05:22]>> [music] [music] >> B minor 11.

[00:05:46]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Now for the dominant chord as I mentioned earlier, I'll play it as an E7sus.

[00:06:06]Pretty much you're playing a D over E.

[00:06:10]>> [music] >> This voicing sounds good when you add the 13.

[00:06:22]You can grab this voicing for D over E.

[00:06:25]>> [music] >> This voicing works as well on the top four strings.

[00:06:46]>> [music] >> All right, so that takes care of the first part of the verse.

[00:06:57]>> [music] >> Now the pre-chorus, something different happens here. It's F sharp at the sixth chord, F sharp minor 7.

[00:07:16]>> [music] >> But then they go to they change it to a Dorian feel, so it becomes B over F sharp.

[00:07:24]Which has a nice bright sound.

[00:07:29]So again, that's B over F sharp.

[00:07:46]>> So that's an interesting twist.

[00:07:56]Then we have this walk down.

[00:08:04]>> [music] >> That's A major.

[00:08:07]E over G sharp.

[00:08:11]6 chord F minor 7.

[00:08:13]>> [music] >> And then the one chord with five in the bass, so A with E in the bass.

[00:08:20]>> [music] >> At one point I think I played this.

[00:08:34]>> [music] >> And then this surprise chord G sharp minor 7.

[00:08:47]Which is a great twist.

[00:08:49]>> [music] >> And then the star of the show, this chord.

[00:08:55]So this is a C sharp 9 sharp 11.

[00:09:01]>> [music] [music] >> But this is a real surprise chord.

[00:09:25]>> [music] [music] >> This is a Lydian dominant chord.

[00:09:38]>> [music] >> Here I'm playing it as a C#13#11.

[00:09:47]>> [music] >> You can drop the root and play it like this.

[00:09:59]>> [music] [music] >> And then the final part of the verse, I guess it would be the chorus, 4 3 2.

[00:10:14]>> [music] >> So, Dmaj7.

[00:10:18]3 C#m7.

[00:10:22]>> [music] >> 2 >> [music] >> 5 and then back home to 1.

[00:10:37]>> [music] >> You can also play them as drop twos on the top four strings.

[00:10:45]>> [music] >> Now that you have a handle on this, if you'd like to continue learning more guitar playing in this same style, I recommend you watch this video right here. Be sure to check out my Patreon and I'll see you in the next video.

[00:11:02][music]