-alan-
pfm Member
I jammed with a pro once, watching his right hand for the chord changes, and he foxed me with the way he played A-major (at the second fret) he was placing his index finger behind the other two in order to fit all three fingers at the second fret (kind of like a D-7 shape). Took me a while to work out what he was doing. And the way B-major was shown in all my guitar books was and remains impossible for me. I just power chord it now.
Although I was made to study piano and do the theory exams as a kid, I never really bothered looking much into guitar theory. Started to get into it a little more recently, and was genuinely surprised to see that full six-string chord patterns aren't actually obligatory - or even in many cases desirable.
Especially true apparently when accompanying musicians on other instruments - like the bass guitar for example, where dropping the lower range notes leaves more space for the bass, and helps the whole mix sound cleaner. I had kind of picked up before on the fact that full chords can muddy the sound before, and was one of the reasons why I always preferred the Tele and Strat single pickups sounds, to yer Les Paul hum-bucker, but thought the 'correct' way to fix that was through changing pickups and tone settings or indeed the guitar rather than use simpler triads or partial chords on the upper strings.
Who'da thunk