COTD 16: FΔ7

A close voicing has all of its notes constrained to an octave. Close voicings are not easy to play on the guitar generally because of its linear tuning. By contrast, the ukulele’s re-entrant fourth string makes close voicings very easy to play; it’s hard to play anything else.

If you find a close voicing that uses one open string, then you can find more inversions of that voicing in close form by just playing the inversions of the fretted notes and leaving the open string to ring out. Here’s an FΔ7 ("F major seven") close voicing that you may know:

XX3210

The fretted notes form the F major triad, and the open string is the seventh. Try playing that F major triad in its next inversion up:

XX7560

And the next up from that:

XX(10)(10)(10)(0)

And finally:

XX(15)(14)(13)(0)

These are all close voicings, with the open string ranging from the highest to the lowest voice. Here’s that same concept applied to C#-7

X4210X

X7660X

X(11)(11)(9)(0)X

X(16)(14)(13)(0)X