First Guitar Chords For Beginners

Both of these chords, and all the other chords you will learn in this Quick-Start Series are open chords. Open chords usually occur on the first three frets of the guitar and they have at least one open string to play.

Throughout this lesson, I’ll give you tips for your fretting hand to help keep your chords sounding clean and free from buzzing noise. I’ll also give you some extra tips that are more subjective, but can still apply to almost everyone.

Before we start playing any chords, you need to know how to read a chord diagram. If you look at a chord diagram like the one onscreen, you’ll see six vertical lines that represent the strings on the guitar. The line on the very left represents the low E string, and the line on the far right represents the high E string.

The horizontal lines on the chord diagram represent the frets, and the chord diagrams in this lesson have a rectangle at the top of the diagram. That rectangle, or box, represents the nut of the guitar so you can keep track of where you are.

The dots on the chord diagram tell you where to put your fingers. If a dot is colored black, it represents the root note of the chord you’re playing. If the dot has a number inside of it, it’s telling you which finger to use when you make that chord shape.

For the A minor 7 chord, you can see on the chord diagram onscreen a circle with a ‘1’ in it on the first fret of the B string. This means you need to use your first finger to play the first fret on the B string.

Another part of chord diagrams to understand is if ‘X’ appears above the nut at all. If you see an ‘X’ above a string, that means that you won’t play that string at all. For A minor 7, you’ll leave the E string out when you strum.

Before we start learning the A minor 7 chord, make sure you are relaxed. Shake out any excess tension so you can avoid injuries. Stay relaxed as you play these chords. The only pain you may feel is in your fingertips as your calluses build up. After about a month of playing regularly, that pain will go away.

To get started, put your fretting hand out in front of you and pretend you’re holding an apple or baseball. For fretting hand technique, this is the posture you want to have. Place your thumb on the back of the neck of the guitar, which is the perfect starting position for learning chords.

A lot of guitar players kink their wrists either too far forward or too far back behind the guitar. If your wrist is too far forward, it can really hurt your hand. If your wrist is too far back, you won’t be able to reach around to make your chords. Keep your wrist fairly straight instead, like I do in the video.

Two more techniques I want to talk about are fret placement and finger posture. Place your first finger on the first fret of the B string. For fret placement, you’ll want to have your finger right behind the fret. In the video, you can see that the further away from the fret I place my finger, the more buzz the note has.

For finger posture, you want to come down right on the very tip of your finger. If I don’t come down on the tip of my finger, my finger will brush against the high E string and accidentally mute it. Staying on the tips of your fingers ensures that you’re not muting any of the surrounding strings.

For the second note of the A minor 7 chord, place your second finger on the second fret of the D string. This is the second of the two notes you need to fret to play this chord. Make sure you’re on the tip of your finger and right behind the fret. Now that you have both notes in place, strum the top five strings, remembering to leave the low E string out.

Listen to the A minor 7 chord as you strum it, checking if it was clean and clear or muted and buzzy. It may take you some time to build up the coordination and muscle you need, but if you remember to stay on the tips of your fingers and come right behind the frets, your chords will sound clean.

When you’re learning a new chord, make the shape and leave it on the guitar for about thirty seconds. Then remove your hand, shake it out, and make the chord shape again. It may take some time for you to make the chord shape again, but that’s okay because you’re working on your muscle memory. Repeating this process a few times is a great way of memorizing your chords.

Now we’re going to learn the C major chord, which is a great chord to see if you are coming down on the tips of your fingers or not. In the video, you can hear a big difference between the clean chord and the muted chord. Tweaking your fretting hand posture just a little makes a big difference in the sound of the chord.

To make the C major chord, first make the A minor 7 shape, and then stretch your third finger to the third fret of the A string. You’ll notice on the chord diagram onscreen that this note is colored black, which means it is a root note for the C major chord, making it a C note.

With the C major chord, put that shape on the guitar for thirty seconds, take it off, shake it out, and repeat the process a few times. As you’re making the shape, remember to come right behind the frets on the tips of your fingers. When you’re starting out, you may have to place each finger down one at a time, but that’s natural. You’ll get better with time and eventually be able to go right to the chord.

The guitar is a popular musical instrument classified as a string instrument with anywhere from 4 to 18 strings, usually having 6. The sound is projected either acoustically or through electrical amplification (for an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar, respectively). It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the right hand while fretting (or pressing against the fret) the strings with the left hand. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning. The modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, and the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument.

There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar (nylon-string guitar), the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar. The tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber. The classical guitar is often played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive fingerpicking technique. The term fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues, bluegrass, and country guitar playing in the US.

Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but a solid body was eventually found more suitable, as it was less prone to feedback. Electric guitars have had a continuing profound influence on popular culture.

The guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul, and many forms of pop.Classical guitars; also known as Spanish guitars are typically strung with nylon strings, plucked with the fingers, played in a seated position and are used to play a diversity of musical styles including classical music. The classical guitar's wide, flat neck allows the musician to play scales, arpeggios, and certain chord forms more easily and with less adjacent string interference than on other styles of guitar. Flamenco guitars are very similar in construction, but are associated with a more percussive tone.

In Portugal, the same instrument is often used with steel strings particularly in its role within fado music. The guitar is called viola, or violão in Brazil, where it is often used with an extra seventh string by choro musicians to provide extra bass support.

In Mexico, the popular mariachi band includes a range of guitars, from the small requinto to the guitarrón, a guitar larger than a cello, which is tuned in the bass register. In Colombia, the traditional quartet includes a range of instruments too, from the small bandola (sometimes known as the Deleuze-Guattari, for use when traveling or in confined rooms or spaces), to the slightly larger tiple, to the full sized classical guitar. The requinto also appears in other Latin-American countries as a complementary member of the guitar family, with its smaller size and scale, permitting more projection for the playing of single-lined melodies. Modern dimensions of the classical instrument were established by the Spaniard Antonio de Torres Jurado (1817–1892).All three principal types of resonator guitars were invented by the Slovak-American John Dopyera (1893–1988) for the National and Dobro (Dopyera Brothers) companies. Similar to the flat top guitar in appearance, but with a body that may be made of brass, nickel-silver, or steel as well as wood, the sound of the resonator guitar is produced by one or more aluminum resonator cones mounted in the middle of the top. The physical principle of the guitar is therefore similar to the loudspeaker. The original purpose of the resonator was to produce a very loud sound; this purpose has been largely superseded by electrical amplification, but the resonator guitar is still played because of its distinctive tone. Resonator guitars may have either one or three resonator cones. The method of transmitting sound resonance to the cone is either a "biscuit" bridge, made of a small piece of hardwood at the vertex of the cone (Nationals), or a "spider" bridge, made of metal and mounted around the rim of the (inverted) cone (Dobros). Three-cone resonators always use a specialized metal bridge. The type of resonator guitar with a neck with a square cross-section—called "square neck" or "Hawaiian"—is usually played face up, on the lap of the seated player, and often with a metal or glass slide. The round neck resonator guitars are normally played in the same fashion as other guitars, although slides are also often used, especially in blues.Electric guitars can have solid, semi-hollow, or hollow bodies; solid bodies produce little sound without amplification. Electromagnetic pickups convert the vibration of the steel strings into signals, which are fed to an amplifier through a cable or radio transmitter. The sound is frequently modified by other electronic devices or the natural distortion of valves (vacuum tubes) in the amplifier. There are two main types of magnetic pickups, single- and double-coil (or humbucker), each of which can be passive or active. The electric guitar is used extensively in jazz, blues, R & B, and rock and roll. The first successful magnetic pickup for a guitar was invented by George Beauchamp, and incorporated into the 1931 Ro-Pat-In (later Rickenbacker) "Frying Pan" lap steel; other manufacturers, notably Gibson, soon began to install pickups in archtop models. After World War II the completely solid-body electric was popularized by Gibson in collaboration with Les Paul, and independently by Leo Fender of Fender Music. The lower fretboard action (the height of the strings from the fingerboard), lighter (thinner) strings, and its electrical amplification lend the electric guitar to techniques less frequently used on acoustic guitars. These include tapping, extensive use of legato through pull-offs and hammer-ons (also known as slurs), pinch harmonics, volume swells, and use of a tremolo arm or effects pedals.

The first electric guitarist of note to use a seven-string guitar was jazz guitarist George Van Eps, who was a pioneer of this instrument.[citation needed] Solid body seven-strings were popularized in the 1980s and 1990s in part due to the release of the Ibanez Universe guitar,[citation needed] endorsed by Steve Vai. Other artists go a step further, by using an eight-string guitar with two extra low strings. Although the most common seven-string has a low B string, Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds and Rickenbacker) uses an octave G string paired with the regular G string as on a 12-string guitar, allowing him to incorporate chiming 12-string elements in standard six-string playing. In 1982 Uli Jon Roth developed the "Sky Guitar," with a vastly extended number of frets, which was the first guitar to venture into the upper registers of the violin. Roth's seven-string and 33-fret "Mighty Wing" guitar features a six-octave range.