Up until now there hasn't been much of a fuss about which strings you strum when you finger a chord. It's been enough that you get the strings to sound out clearly without buzzing or making some other noise while you fret the notes and play.

At the beginning of this lesson, you played a C7 chord. Remember the advice that accompanied that chord: “Don't play String 6 and String 1, just the middle four strings.” What you did, in a way, was to mute or deaden the sound of String 6 and String 1 so that they wouldn't sound when you played the chord. That's because while the open note E is part of a C7 chord, if you move that chord shape up the neck, the note E quickly clashes with the other C7-shape chords that don't contain the note E. (Refer to Chapter 7 for a detailed explanation of harmony.)

A muted chord is one in which you must deaden (or mute) one or two strings while you play the chord. You mute the strings so that you get the correct key tones out of the chord shape every time you play it, wherever you play it.

FIGURE 8-11 shows a moveable G chord with two strings (that is, notes) crossed out with an x: String 5 and String 1. That means you shouldn't let these strings sound when you play the chord. A pretty tall order, right? Even knowing about barre chords, haven't you just spent all this time reading a book repeating over and over that you should make the notes ring out clearly? Well, the answer is yes — and no. As you get better at playing the guitar, you'll find that some things that are good to do when you're beginning are not so good to do when you become more advanced.

To mute a string, you need to shape your hand in such a way that these two strings are dampened or deadened when you strum a downstroke. To sound the note, you should use the tip of your finger on your left hand. To dampen or mute a note, use the fatty or flat part of either the side of your finger or just under your fingertip, depending on the kind of chord you're trying to play. Now play each of the remaining notes of the chord until they sound clear. Play them individually (called an arpeggio, as discussed in Chapter 6) to make sure you have them right.

FIGURE 8-12 shows the five basic seventh chords in muted forms. These chords sound very colorful. If you can learn to play them well, you'll develop a great feeling of achievement.

Unfortunately, there isn't room here to really explore the whole concept of moveable chords and muted chords, but there are lots of books out there on the subject. See, for example, The Everything Guitar Chords Book by Marc Schonbrun, which has literally every chord known to man — and a CD of how the chords sound played on the guitar.