Of all the basic foundations required for playing guitar, guitar chords are the most fundamental. This is due largely to the fact that even music based on melodic lines are in fact being outlined by an invisible chordal background when composed.
Buy a guitar chord book and it's easy to be overwhelmed by the 1000's of chords and names contained with the pages. In truth however, you only 10 basic shapes to open up 100's of songs!
Guitar chords are also divided into families, the family a chord belongs to is determined by it's type. For all beginners we have 3 main families of chords to learn. They are Major, Minor and Dominant 7 chords. With these in place you have all the necessary elements required to form keys and play through complete songs.
Learning chord shapes is actually quite easy, they are not hard to remember. A greater difficulty lies in being able to sound them clearly. You need to press down hard and this is going to hurt your fingers in the beginning stages until the harder skin has built up on your fingers.
You can view this process as a rite of passage for playing guitar chords. Try to press down hard consistently in order to give built the harder skin as evenly and as quickly as possible.
The main distinction we make between chords is whether they are moveable or not. Chord shapes which cannot be moved are normally referred to as Open Chords and generally involve the using of open strings on the guitar. These normally represent the beginner guitar chords we all start of learning.
The second kind are called Barre Chords (pronounced Bar). Barre chords are much harder than Open Chords and as a result beginners will normally wait anything up to a year before learning them. Barre chords can be moved up and down the neck to form new chords without any problem. The main advantage of learning them is the new array of keys they will open for you to play songs in.
A common beginner mistake is to try to learn lots and lots of chords. This is of no real use to you when first learning to play. It's far better to concentrate on a smaller group of guitar chords and ones you'll use consistently in many different songs.
Buy a guitar chord book and it's easy to be overwhelmed by the 1000's of chords and names contained with the pages. In truth however, you only 10 basic shapes to open up 100's of songs!
Guitar chords are also divided into families, the family a chord belongs to is determined by it's type. For all beginners we have 3 main families of chords to learn. They are Major, Minor and Dominant 7 chords. With these in place you have all the necessary elements required to form keys and play through complete songs.
Learning chord shapes is actually quite easy, they are not hard to remember. A greater difficulty lies in being able to sound them clearly. You need to press down hard and this is going to hurt your fingers in the beginning stages until the harder skin has built up on your fingers.
You can view this process as a rite of passage for playing guitar chords. Try to press down hard consistently in order to give built the harder skin as evenly and as quickly as possible.
The main distinction we make between chords is whether they are moveable or not. Chord shapes which cannot be moved are normally referred to as Open Chords and generally involve the using of open strings on the guitar. These normally represent the beginner guitar chords we all start of learning.
The second kind are called Barre Chords (pronounced Bar). Barre chords are much harder than Open Chords and as a result beginners will normally wait anything up to a year before learning them. Barre chords can be moved up and down the neck to form new chords without any problem. The main advantage of learning them is the new array of keys they will open for you to play songs in.
A common beginner mistake is to try to learn lots and lots of chords. This is of no real use to you when first learning to play. It's far better to concentrate on a smaller group of guitar chords and ones you'll use consistently in many different songs.
About the Author:
The writer is the inventor of Guitar in a Nutshell. A very popular system for learning guitar. Check out the site for lots of info on Guitar Chords and free video lessons on playing acoustic guitar.
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