How To Play Guitar Chords

Aspiring guitar players usually approach learning to play guitar chords with some trepidation. There is a reality check in the job of actually learning to put your fingers into chord fingerings after watching a professional guitar player changing chords at blinding speed, seemingly without effort. The good news is that once you have learnt how to play your first three chords and begin to use them to play songs, then you are well on your way to being a real guitarist. What you need to get over the first hump is simply practice. And you need to do it on a regular basis.

Once you are playing chords you are a “guitarist”. There is so much more satisfaction in enticing the colors and flavors of chords than being restricted to playing single note tunes. Basically a chord is a combination of two or more strings being played simultaneously. You can fret notes on all the strings you play or you can mix fretted notes with the notes of open strings. If you hold down the fourth, third and second strings at the second fret and strum the fifth, fourth, third, second and first strings, you have played an A major chord. If you hold down just the fourth string at the second fret and play just the fifth and fourth strings, you have played an A5 chord.

If you have not tried to play chords on the guitar before, go get a guitar and try it now. Try the A major chord I described above by placing your index finger on the second fret of the fourth string, your middle finger on the second fret of the third string and your ring finger on the second fret of the second string. Right away you see the difficulty of fitting your fingers together in a little space while at the same time applying enough pressure on each string to play the note cleanly. Now think about changing from this position to another chord shape and back again. If you are like most people you are wondering if it really does need some special talent that guitarists have and nobody else has. No. Once you have done half an hour’s practice for a few days, you will begin to see light at the end of the tunnel.

To begin your learning of guitar chords you will need a collection of chord charts. These are available from music shops but the easiest way to get a large collection of chord shapes to learn is to simply download them from the net. A chord chart, or chord diagram, is a picture of the guitar fretboard which shows you which frets to place your fingers behind to play a chord. Another way of picturing guitar chords is to use tablature. Tablature is an ancient way of writing down music which is surprisingly computer-friendly. Although there are programs that help guitar players write out their tabs, it is quite easy to do it using any text editor. Whichever system of musical notation you choose to make use of, it will be useless unless you set aside some time each day to practice.

Here is a great tool for generating guitar chords with a guide to which fingers to use.

Here is a video lesson on beginner guitar chords: