Mandolin chords
All 108 mandolin chords on Alviena, grouped by family. Every chord has its own page: the diagram, the notes it is built from, the shape in detail, and the charts on the site that use it.
Major
Minor
Dominant sevenths
Major sevenths
Minor sevenths
Diminished
Augmented
Sus2
Sus4
The same chords on another instrument
Where to start
These are the chords that come up most often in the charts published on the site. Learning them on mandolin before the rest opens up the largest part of the repertoire: the figure says how many charts each one appears in.
These 10 chords are enough to play a good share of the catalogue. The rest of this page groups them by family, from the most common to the rarest.
The instrument
Four courses of two strings tuned in unison, G D A E like a violin. The fifth between courses makes shapes tighter than on a guitar and keeps chords close to their theoretical form: three or four notes, rarely more.
Reading a diagram
Read the diagram as if the instrument were standing upright in front of you: the strings run vertically, the lowest on the left, and the horizontal bars are the frets. A dot marks a finger; a circle above a string means it rings open; a cross means it is not played. A thick bar across the top means the shape starts at the nut; otherwise the number on the left gives the fret of the first row shown. A solid bar across several strings is a barre: one finger lays them all down.