How to Play Drop 2 Chords on Guitar

If you’re ready to go beyond open chords, barre chords, and 7th chords, drop 2 chords are a great next step to expand your harmonic vocabulary and make your playing sound richer.

In this lesson, you’ll learn what drop 2 chords are, how to play them on guitar, and practical ways to use them in music. This concept rearranges chord tones into a new order that creates smoother voice-leading and more interesting textures which you can apply to many styles.

If you haven’t explored them yet, be sure to check out our lesson on spread triad chords, which ties closely to the drop 2 approach and will help these shapes make even more sense.

Before we jump into the chord shapes, let’s quickly review a few key musical terms so everything clicks once we start playing.

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What is a chord voicing?

A chord voicing refers to how the notes of a chord are arranged or spaced on the guitar. As you may already know, there are many different ways to play the same chord — each one is a unique “voicing”.

For example, even though the following shapes all use the same three notes, their order and spacing change how the chord sounds and feels. See the charts below.

What are chord tones?

Chord tones are the notes that define a chord’s quality whether it major, minor, dominant, or something else.

For example:

• The chord tones 1, 3, 5 create a Major triad.
• The tones 1, b3, 5 create a minor triad.

Once you’ve learned open and barre chords (which are based on these triads), the next step is to explore 7th chords, which add one more note (the 7th) for a richer, more complex sound.

To review the foundation, you can check out this lesson to help you unlock Major triads on guitar.

A 7th chord contains the tones 1, 3, 5, 7 and is common in styles like jazz, R&B, and soul because of its fuller, expressive character. For example, the C Major 7 has these chord tones: C – E – G – B.

And these would be the chord tones for a C minor 7 chord, in which you simply bring the 3rd and 7th chord tones down a half step from the previous chord example. For example, C Minor 7 chord tones are C – Eb – G – Bb.

To learn more about chord tones, see this lesson.

What is a drop 2 chord?

A drop 2 chord rearranges the notes of a 7th chord to create wider spacing, giving you voicings that sound smoother and fall more naturally under the fingers on guitar.

To form one, take the second-highest note of a 7th chord and drop it down one octave, placing it as the lowest note (the bass). This rearrangement opens the harmony and creates shapes that work beautifully on guitar.

Traditional 7th-chord inversions work well on piano but are often impractical on guitar because the notes sit too close together and would require really wide stretches to play them. By applying the drop 2 approach, you redistribute those chord tones into shapes that both sound richer and play more comfortably across the strings.

Now that we know the chord tones for C Major 7 (C–E–G–B), we can voice the chord in four different ways depending on how we order the notes — before applying the “drop.”

Inversions using Closed Voicings

Inversions using Drop 2 Voicings

Now let’s take a look at each of these inversions and drop the 2nd voice. This is what each chord would look like:

C Major 7 drop 2 chords on the 6th string

Here are the drop 2 chords for C Major 7 starting on the 6th string ordered from a lower to higher range on the guitar.

Here are the same shapes in chart form below.

C Major 7 drop 2 chords on the 5th string

C Major 7 drop 2 chords on the 4th string

C minor 7 drop 2 chords on the 6th string

Now, let’s look at what the drop 2 chords look like for C minor 7 starting on the 6th string.

C minor 7 drop 2 chords on the 5th string

C minor 7 drop 2 chords on the 4th string

We are only covering Major and minor 7th chords in this lesson but you can also apply drop 2 chords to other chord qualities such as dominant 7th or half diminished chords.

Get the chart here!

Easily look up guitar chords with the Essential Guitar Chords Chart!

This chart covers how to play:

• Major chords
• Minor chords
• Major 7 chords
• Minor 7 chords
• Dominant chords
• Half diminished chords
• Diminished chords
• Chords starting on all (12) root notes
• Over 80+ chords!

👉 Get it here!

Drop 2 chords application examples

Here is an example of drop 2 chord inversions over a repeated Major 7 chord.

Example 1

Example 2

Now that you know these drop 2 shapes for C Major 7 and C minor 7, you want to be able to apply them over different chords.

For this next example which includes another chord, let’s add an F Major 7 transitions smoothly when switching. The chord tones for F Major 7 are: F, A, C and E.

Try this following example:

Example 3

Here are drop 2 chords based on one scale (aka diatonic chords or related chords). In this case the parent scale is A Major.

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Wrapping up

Drop 2 chords are a powerful arranging tool that add color, depth, and variety to your playing.
They’re built from 7th chords (which contain four chord tones) and work by spreading those notes across a wider range — giving you shapes that both sound smoother and fit naturally on the guitar fretboard.

Start by learning each shape on different string sets, then challenge yourself to move them through all 12 keys. To transpose, simply locate the root note and shift the entire shape up or down the neck.

Once you’re comfortable with major and minor 7th forms, try applying the same drop-2 concept to Major 6 chords for unlocking different harmonies.

For a deeper dive, you can also explore my full lesson on jazz guitar chords.

📘 Get the free guitar practice guide here!

All the best,

JG Music Lessons