Cosmic Guitar Academy: Beginner Lessons: Basic Chords

This lesson is taken from one of the tutorials on Andy Webber's "Learn To Play The Electric Guitar" DVD. To purchase this DVD for just £6.99 and access the whole range of lessons and more click here.

Chords are groups of three or more notes that are played together. Regardless of what type of music you’re into and what you want to play, you need to learn these basic chords. There are only a few of these with a couple of variations on each of them, so once you’re started it gets a lot easier and you will be well on you’re way to being able to play 90% of all songs ever written!

Open Chords

An open chord is the name given to any chord that uses open strings. They are usually played near the nut. They are different from Barre chords, which do not use open strings and are played further up the neck. Barre chords will be covered in the intermediate lessons in this series.

The first chord we are going to look at is D. Take a look at the chord diagram below. This is a diagram showing part of the neck of the guitar (as shown in the photo). The horizontal lines are the frets, and the vertical lines are the strings. The first horizontal line represents the nut, and the lines after that represent the first fret, second fret etc.

The circles represent where you should place your fingers to play the D chord. The numbers in the circles show you which finger you should place there.
1-First finger (index finger)
2-Middle finger
3-Ring finger
4-Little finger (pinkie) (not shown in diagram)

This is what a D chord should look like:

Try it out now. Be sure to get your fingers as close as you can behind the correct fret, this will ensure a nice clean sound.

Noticed the X symbols in the diagram? That means you don’t play those strings. So, starting from the third string down (the D string), pluck each string in turn. Each note needs to ring clearly.

Play the video to hear what it should sound like.

If certain strings do not ring clearly then you need to change something. Most likely you are touching more than one string with a finger and this is muting one of the strings. To prevent this, make sure the ends of your fingers are almost vertical against the fretboard, and you are only using your fingertips to fret each note. Take another look at the picture to see.

The other possible cause of not getting nice clean sounding notes, is that your fingertips are not close enough to the frets. You can usually get away with having the tips of your fingers anywhere from right behind the fret to about a centimetre behind it, but it’s good practise to get them as close as possible.

Also make sure you are not accidentally muting any of the string with your right hand/arm/sleeve.

Now keep picking each string in turn… Got a nice sounding chord? Try playing them all at once, except the first two strings. There we have it, your first chord!

You need to be able to get your fingers in the right place reasonably quickly, so take your fingers away from the fretboard and relax them, then move them back to the right position again to form a D chord. Then pick each string in turn again to see if they’re in the correct positions. Keep doing this over and over until you can do it reasonably quickly.

Takes a bit of practise doesn’t it? Stick at it and make sure you can do it fairly quickly before moving on.

There aren’t many songs in the world that only use one chord, so we need to learn some more.

Here is a C chord:

This time only the E string is missed out. Try getting your fingers into the shape shown. It should look something like this:

Again, listen to the chord being played in Video.

Play each string individually to see if you’ve got it right. If not make some corrections as before, and then check again. Once you’re happy you’ve got it, practise letting go and getting back in position.

As I mentioned earlier, this is the hardest part of learning the guitar so you really need to concentrate on getting everything just right.

Now go back to D. You will probably find that it feels like you have forgotten it, but it will come back to you quickly! Now practise changing from D to C and back again. Keep going until you can change between them fluently and smoothly. This will be slow at first, but with a little practise your fingers will ‘know’ where to go and you wont have to think about it.

Time for our next chord: G.

All the strings are played this time. Once again get the right position and check it by plucking each string individually, then practise getting to that position quickly. Watch the video to hear it.

Now, remind yourself of what D and C are, then try going from D to C to G and back to D. Persevere until you can do it smoothly and quickly. Once you can do this, try going from D to G to C and any other combinations you can think of.

Really concentrate here on getting your chords ringing clearly and getting you chord changes nice a fluid. It will all pay off later!

Right! Now you can play D, C and G well, you're ready to make some music! Move on to chord progression 1.

Andy Webber.

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