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Lindsay Buckingham Known as a songwriter and singer. He’s not often on top 10 guitar hero lists because he’s not your typical guitar rock god, but he’s a seriously talented and unique player.
There are plenty of times during her time with Fleetwood Mac where Lindsey lets loose and pulls out some pretty tasty lead guitar, but we usually find her more in the world of rhythm. He usually does very intricately picked guitar lines and uses suspended chords and alternate sounds.
In this lesson we’re going to check out four chords straight from his guitar style!
Csus2
A big part of Lindsay Buckingham’s acoustic guitar style, as heard on the track Landslide, is the use of chords that stay the same but the bass moves.
Taking this Csus2 as a starting point, you can apply a Travis Picking style rhythm to it, then move the low C note down the fret to the B note to re-voice the chord as G/B. If you then drop the B note down to the Bb on the first fret, you get a Gm/Bb chord.
This simple technique allows you to transpose a single note, root, and specify multiple chords.
Gmin/D (double drop D)
In Fleetwood Mac’s song The Chain, Buckingham plays in double drop D tuning (DADGBD) Capo on the 2nd fret. This chord appears in the chorus of the song and is a Gmin chord played in this tuning, but with a low D note in the bass.
The recording of this chord is played with a capo on the 2nd fret, just like you hear in The Chain, but it also works without a capo.
Dmaj7
This variation of the Dmaj7 chord is heard on the track Sara. This chord takes the form of a D Minor chord, but you play it on the 5th, 6th, and 7th frets. The open D string is still the root, and you’re fretting over the maj7, maj3, and 5th notes.
This chord gives a slightly different feel to the Dmaj7 chord in the intro of this song.
Fsus2
This Fsus2 chord comes from the pre-chorus of the track You Make Loving Fun. This is as a C chord from the CAGED system, except you don’t play the 6th fret on the D string, which is the major 3rd of the chord.
In the song, Linsdsey plays the sus2 voicing and they hammer on the wrist 3rd to make it an F major chord. To do this, you need to leave the third finger free for the hammer, while maintaining the sus2 shape.
