Ex. 1
The dominant 7 is the most important chord in jazz music. Two essential fingerings are shown below. The F7 has the root on the 6th string while the C7 has the root on the 5th string.
Ex. 2
The chords are movable, therefore you can make any dominant 7 chord with the two fingerings. To identify the chords, we need to know the notes on the 5th and 6th strings. F7 is on the 1st fret. The root is on the 6th string. If we take the same fingering and slide up the neck, we have all 12 dominant 7 chords as illustrated below.
fret chord
1 F7 (the 6th string 1st fret is F which is the root note when fingering the F7 chord)
2 F#7 (Gb7)
3 G7
4 G#7 (Ab7)
5 A7
6 A#7 (Bb7)
7 B7
8 C7
9 C#7 (Db7)
10 D7
11 D#7 (Eb7)
12 E7
C7 is on the 1st fret. The root is on the 5th string. If we take the same fingering and slide up the neck we have all 12 dominant 7th chords again.
fret chord
1 C7 (the 5th string 3rd fret is C which is the root note when fingering the C7 chord)
2 C#7 (Db7)
3 D7
4 D#7 (Eb7)
5 E7
6 F7
7 F#7 (Gb7)
8 G7
9 G#7 (Ab7)
10 A7
11 A#7 (Bb7)
12 B7
