There are a lot of chords that we don’t use. Not because we don’t know them but because they don’t feel natural.

If every time we quit something just because it doesn’t feel natural, then we will miss out on a lot of fantastic chord progressions. For this reason, I wrote a beautiful instrumental using these lovely chords so that you can practice them with a musical idea.

The chords I am referring to are the Drop 2.

But what’s a Drop 2 chord? A Drop 2 is a seventh chord played with a different interval structure than the typical root shape.

The seventh chords are built with the Root, 3rd, 5th, and 7th. When we bring the second note from the top (the 5th) one octave down, we are playing a Drop 2 chord. So, the Cmaj7 chord, which in its root shape is played with the notes C E G B, becomes a Drop 2 chord when it’s played with the notes G C E B. We can call this chord a Cmaj7/G or Cmaj7 with the 5th on the bass.

In this lesson, we are going to take a look at the Drop 2 chords played on the 6, 5, 4, and 3rd string. All these chords have the 5th on the bass.

The chord shapes are probably new to many of you. I recommend that you embrace them and try to implement them in your chord progressions.