Guitar How-To » Guitar Chords For Beginners

How To Play An F Chord

gyorgy — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 02:51:32 +0000

Any kind of music you learn, you will be better off learning barre chords. When you are playing barre chords you are basically using your index finger to shorten the guitar fretboard. If you just place your index finger across the guitar’s neck and press down, you will see that it will take some practice to get all the strings sounding cleanly. But nobody who has ever devoted a reasonable amount of time and effort to guitar practice has ever failed to learn how to play barre chords.

The first barre chord most people learn is based on the shape of the E major chord:

e—————–0—————————|

B————–0——————————|

G———–1———————————|

D——–2————————————|

A—–2—————————————|

E–0——————————————|

To play the F chord in the first position, you simply move the chord up one fret as you can see in the first tab on this page featuring tabs for the F Major Chord in several fingerings moving up the guitar neck. So the notes are changing from E B E G# B E to F C F A C F.

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How To Play Guitar Chords – The Newbie Guide

gyorgy — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 22:08:17 +0000

Learning how to play guitar chords is among the first items on the agenda of a newbie guitar player. But playing guitar is a new skill with a whole new system of muscle movements to learn, not to mention learning the theory behind guitar chords and how to use them in your guitar playing. If you have a teacher he will show you how you should be holding your guitar and correct any mistakes you are making about fingering chords or strumming the strings with your right hand. If you do not have a teacher who can help you with the physical part of learning to play guitar chords, you will need to be very careful how you treat your back, shoulders, arms and hands.

The chords we mostly use to play popular music are derived from the keys A G C and D. As you progress in your guitar playing you will learn how to play these basic chords all over the guitar fretboard. Guitar students usually begin to learn how to play chords by first learning to finger simple “open” chords. They are called open chords because at least one of the notes in any of these chords is sounded by playing an open string. After the muscles in your hands get used to fingering chords and pressing down on the guitar strings, you will move onto “barre” or “bar” chords that are played with the first finger held down across some or all of the strings.

A good place to start in understanding chords is to get to know chord “families”. Family is a good name to describe how we group the keys we use in guitar playing. Let us take a look at what the chord families consist of. In the A family, the chords we use are A, D and E. The D family contains the chords D, E minor, G and A. In the G chord family we find the chords G, A minor, C, D and E minor. The C family has the chords C, D minor, E minor, F and G. There are variations on basic chords that add variety to your guitar playing. The main variation we use is the “seventh” chord. You will be learning common seventh chords like G7, D, and C7 early in your chord playing career as these chords appear frequently in popular music.

Learning to finger the chords with your left hand (if you are right-handed) is only half the job. The other half is learning to strum chords with your right hand. Fortunately when we get into actually doing the strumming, it makes the task of learning chords easier, not harder.

Once you have learnt your basic chords and you are ready to play some more challenging music, you will learn a few chord playing tricks that make learning to play guitar a little simpler. Power chords are a good example. These are two- or three-note chords that are used to great effect in rock music. They can be moved up and down the guitar neck according to which key you are playing in and you will mostly find electric guitar players use them with distortion. In fact there are basic chord shapes that are played as open chords but, with addition of a barre using the first finger, they can be moved up the fretboard to make chords in all other keys. The basic shapes you will learn for movable chords will probably be the open C, A and E shapes. Another trick is when you are using the E major chord shape as a barre chord, say at the fifth fret, which is A major, to play the minor chord all you have to do is lift you pinky off the fretboard. There will be many other tricks and wrinkles that you will discover as the guitar begins to be less of a mystery.

How To Learn To Play Guitar Chords Smoothly

gyorgy — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 19:04:46 +0000

There are lots of ways to play each chord and you should learn them all. This will develop flexibility in your muscles. There are times during the day when we are free to pick up the guitar and practice our chords. If noise is a problem, you might be able to get away with stuffing a handkerchief under the strings near the bridge but you need plenty of opportunities to practice getting a clean sound when you change chords. Sloppy chord practice will only give you sloppy muscle memories.

Here is a video on muscle memory and learning chords . . .

Learn How To Play Guitar Chords

gyorgy — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:02:26 +0000

Here is a post on learning how to play guitar chords on Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free:
“Another exercise for developing physical dexterity is practicing scales. One point that needs to be made here is to learn scale shapes. Just as there is an assortment of guitar chords in first position, and a few basic shapes that can be moved up the fretboard, there are also scale patterns that can be moved to all positions. One thing to look out for is the point where fatigue sets in after a few runs up and down the scale. Accuracy and speed do not necessarily follow warming up the fingers. The answer to this is do not spend too much time on scales if you do not yet know your chords. Once you know some open chords you can play a few songs which is something to show for your initial efforts. Then you can settle down to working on scales. Improvement in playing scales simply comes with some weeks and months of practice.”

The complete post is here:

How To Play Five Basic Guitar Chords

gyorgy — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 18:02:07 +0000

This free video helps you to learn the basic open guitar chords: C, D, G, Em and Am.

Technorati Tags: open guitar chords

Simple Guitar Chords – How To Play Three-Note Chords

gyorgy — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:56:29 +0000

Three-note chords are commonly used by jazz guitar players but anyone can benefit from learning the technique and listening to the resulting chords. Playing three-note chords can be a little difficult when you first try it but after a little practice you’ll easily get the hang of damping the strings between the ones you want to play.

e———-0————|

B——–2————–|

G——0—————-|

D—-2——————|

A–0——————–|

E———————–|

If we take the open A7 chord as an example, the sixth string is not played, the chord is made up of the open A string, E on the second fret of the fourth string, the open G string, C# at the second fret of the second string and the open top E string. You can just play the A, E and C# by damping the G string with the finger you are using to play the E note. Just make a small adjustment so that the finger fretting the E note is up against the G string.

The trick to playing three-note chords is the art of changing the fingers to fret notes AND damp strings. The video illustrates how to dampen strings to achieve a better sound when strumming chords . . .

Working On How To Change Guitar Chords

gyorgy — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:51:51 +0000

How to change guitar chords is an area of guitar playing that you will be returning to again and again. It’s an area that needs a lot of experimenting, learning from your mistakes and allowing muscle memory to learn the chords in its own time. One approach you could try is to learn a new chord by using it as a central point to go to from all the other chords you know. So if you want to learn the B major chord, get your fingers into the chord position and strum the chord for a while. Then, take your fingers off the fretboard and rest them completely for a few seconds before assuming the chord shape again. Do this a couple of times to give your left hand the chance to know what the chord position feels like. Now, select a chord that you know well – it doesn’t have to be one that sounds good with B major – and play that chord, then change to the new chord. Then select another chord and go from that chord to the new one. The idea is to give your muscles as many challenges as possible by taking the new chord shape from a variety of other finger positions. This is a faster way of learning a new chord shape.

This video gives away one of the “secrets” of changing chords. This is the simple trick of getting one finger in place and allowing the others to follow instead of using our minds to place all the fingers in a new chord shape.

If you want further info on this tricky subject, here’s an article on Learning How To Change Guitar Chords Like A Demon

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Learning Guitar Chords

gyorgy — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:28:24 +0000

When you start learning guitar chords you will probably have some chord charts or guitar tabs to show you where to put your fingers. Having a written guide to guitar chords is not enough and you need not limit yourself to charts and tabs when there are plenty of people showing you how to play guitar chords on video sites like YouTube. Listening to someone play the chord and hearing them explain how they go about making the chord shape with their fingers makes a world of difference to how fast and how accurately you are learning guitar chords.

When you are sitting in a chair or on your bed at home learning guitar chords, it would be a good idea to see what you are doing as a process starting with how you are sitting and holding the guitar. The point of sitting down to learn guitar chords is to give your body every opportunity to learn the movements and postures needed to play guitar chords. The key to fingering and changing guitar chords is relaxation. Don’t get too bogged down in detail, but start by satisfying yourself that your posture is fairly tension free without being limp. If there are areas of tension in your body there’s no need to eliminate them now, you can work on it in future practice sessions.

When it comes to actually taking the chord fingering positions, the relaxation you started with should continue into how your fingers hover over the fretboard. The idea is to make your fingers available to learning guitar chords without putting them into artificial positions. Having your hand touching the guitar neck with your thumb with your fingers parallel to the fretboard is a position that must be learned but this position can be taken without inducing unnecessary tension.

With your fingers taking the chord shape, use your pick to slowly strum the chord. By slowly I mean so that you can hear each individual string. If you are muffling any strings because your left hand is not quite in position, make the necessary adjustments. You are probably either not pressing down enough on a string or one of your fingers is touching the string next to the one it is pressing down on.

Remember that learning guitar chords is done using two or three simple chords at one time. Part of learning chords is learning how to change chords. Your learning will be very slow if you just sit strumming one chord over and over. And go for easy open chords at first. Learning guitar chords is hard enough without biting off more than you can chew.

Here is a tutorial on the basics of guitar chords. The video features some basic chords and how to play them.

Technorati Tags: learning guitar chords

How To Place Left Hand Fingers For Guitar Chords

gyorgy — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:14:31 +0000

It is important to realize that you don’t need to press down on the guitar strings to play cleanly. You need to experiment with exercising the correct amount of pressure on the strings.

Your fingers need to be behind the fret rather than on top of it. Also it is important to allow your fingers assume a natural position rather than imposing what your brain thinks is a “correct” position. In a sense, you should just relax your hand, and then see if it is in a position where you can exert adequate pressure on the strings without straining.

This video takes you through the basic preparations you need to carry out in order to practice your guitar playing in the most effective way . . .

The G Major Chord On The Guitar – How It Looks And Sounds

gyorgy — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:47:02 +0000

Now that we know how to read chords in guitar tab, we can discover the joys of actually playing some simple open chords. The chord in the tab below is G major. You will notice that we are only fingering three strings in this chord – the sixth string at the third fret, the fifth string at the second fret and the first string at the third fret. The fourth, third and second strings are played open, that is without needing to place the left hand fingers on them.

Put your second finger on the third fret of the sixth string, and your first finger on the second fret of the fifth string. Pause for a moment and feel that your hand, and, indeed your whole body is relaxed without flopping in a heap. Now place your third finger at the third fret of the first string.

While you have your fingers in position, check that your thumb is at the center of the back of the guitar neck. Hold your left hand with enough force to press on the strings, but no unnecessary tension.

Now, play the chord with your fingers or the pick, from the sixth to the first string, letting all the strings ring out. If any of the strings are muffled, adjust your hand so that the fingers are pressing on the strings without interfering with the adjacent strings.

e—————–3—–|

B————–0——–|

G———–0———–|

D——–0————–|

A—–2—————–|

E–3——————–|

Here is a video showing you how the chord should look and sound: