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This is the first part of a series of articles one how to teach yourself how to play guitar. I am assuming the novice guitar player knows the basics: how to tune the guitar, hold a pick, etc. In this installment I cover how to read a chord diagram, and show you some practice techniques that help you remember the chord patterns while improving your ability to quickly change between chords.

 

Some Basic Info for the Absolute Beginner

So you got a new guitar and are itching to play it, huh? Great! I am not going to go into things like how to properly tune your guitar, or explain how to hold it, use a pick here. There is plenty of info out there about that. Instead, I am going to focus on showing you some basic chords and a few techniques to get a feel of your new instrument.

The chord diagram is a simple representation of the freeboard of the guitar, as shown here:

Chords are shown as a series of dots on the chord diagram that indicate where the strings are pressed down:

Not so hard, is it? OK, let’s learn the basic chords that every guitar player needs to know.

The Five Chords Everyone Knows

These are the basic chords that are used in almost every major song ever made for guitar. At first they will feel really awkward to play until your fingers get used to how they feel. But once you learn how they feel, you will never forget them. And even better, once you can finger these chords with ease, you will find all the other chords out there are just variations on these.

To start, pick any two chords. Make the first chord and strum the guitar while counting you yourself:

1, 2, 3, 4…. with each strum. Then immediately switch to the second chord and strum it 4 times, counting to yourself again.

For instance, if you picked the DMajor (DM) chord and the EMajor (EM) chord, it would go like this:

Chord being fingered: D D D D E E E E Strumming ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Count 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Keep repeating this until you can switch between the D and E chords with ease.

This exercise does a couple neat things:

Teaches you new chords. You learn how to change chords quickly while staying on time. You learn how it ~feels~ to change finger positions between two chords. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Learning how it feels to “hold” a certain chord is important. After a while, you will notice that when you hear that chord in a song, your hand will already know where to go to make that sound. Equally important is knowing how it feels to change between two chords.

If you could watch your hand in slow motion as it changes from the D to E chord, it is an amazing dance as each finger jumps to a new position. Learning the steps to that dance is an important part in being able to play. Not only do you need to know the chords themselves, but you need to know the dance steps of changing between the chords. You need to be able to do that without thinking about it. That’s what this exercise does for you.

After you get your first two chords down, change it up. Use one chord you know well, and a brand new one.  Once you can easily switch between any two of the above chords, change it up by picking THREE chords and running though the changes….

OK, the Sixth Chord Everyone Knows!

I lied. There is another chord everyone knows. It is FMajor (FM), and it looks like this:

It feels similar to the CMajor (CM) chord you already learned, so if you are already comfortable making that chord, the FMajor will seem pretty easy.

But this chord has something really cool it can do that none of the first five chords can. You can MOVE this chord! Check it out, by moving it up two frets, it becomes a GMajor (GM) chord…

But wait a sec… I bet you are asking “But didn’t I already learn a GMajor (GM) chord in the first five?”

Yes, you did! This is just another way of making the same chord. Try the exercise where you alternate between two chords using this GMajor chord and the GMajor chord from the first page. They sound similar, don’t they? One sounds a little higher, and one sounds a little bigger, but they are still the same chord.

Cool, huh?

Ok… Fun time. Move this chord all up and down the neck of the guitar. Play it in every different position to see what it sounds like.

Now that you know if you move the FMajor chord up two frets, it becomes a GMajor chord. If you move it up two MORE frets, what chord do you think THAT one is? Hmmm…. The Mighty All-Purpose Power Chord

I love this chord. This is the chord of rock. If you have ever heard any song with a nasty heavy thick sounding guitar, you can bet the guy is using power chords.

A power chord looks like this:

Pretty simple, huh? You normally only use two fingers to play a power chord. The index finger is on the lowest string, and either the ring or pinky finger presses the other two strings down. The beauty of this chord is that it can move up or down the neck just like the FMajor chord you learned.

The chord above is a BMajor (BM), but slide it up one fret and it becomes a CMajor (CM) like this:

Yep, you already know another CMajor chord, don’t you? Play them both and compare. The first CMajor you learned sounds very big and “jangly”, this one sounds very focussed and hard, doesn’t it?

OK, on an acoustic guitar a Barre chord might not sound all ~that~ impressive, but wait until you try it on an electric guitar with some distortion! Oh, Nirvana!

Just like the FMajor chord, every time you move a power chord up or down the neck of the guitar, you are actually playing a different chord. You are just using the same fingering pattern.

Can you figure out where the DMajor position of the power chord is? The power chord has one other trick up it’s sleeve… You can move it one string lower on the guitar.

If you take the same fingering pattern and move it to the lowest 3 strings on the guitar, you have just opened up a whole new range of chords… All without having to learn any new finger patterns at all!

Check these out:

 

 

Look really close at those chord names: FMajor (FM) and GMajor (GM). I’ll wait here while you realize that you already know these chord names from earlier…

Again, these are just different ways to finger the same chords, but if you compare them, you will realize that they all have a different sound.

With that, I will leave you here to play all three GMajor (GM) chords you know, and wonder why they all have the same name, and sound kind of the same, but have a totally different tone… That is the topic for a later discussion.

For now, try out those Barre chords, and get used to how they sound. If you hear a song on the radio, try using your Barre chords to figure out a chord or two of what they are playing… You might be amazed!