Guitar Chords

Nothing Gets You Playing Guitar Chords Faster Than Guitar In a Nutshell™!

Guitar Chord Chart and Beginner Guitar Chords

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.

As a beginning guitar player you really don't need many chords to get you going. Even a basic set of 10 chords will open the door to 100's of popular songs instantly!

Guitar chords are also divided into families, the family a chord belongs to is determined by it'stype. 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.

One of the most common problems when learning chords on the guitar is to get them to sound clearly
and without any bad erroneous noises. Initially you could be surprised by how hard to need to press down
to get to sound properly and this of course is going to result in your fingers hurting.

I refer to this as a kind of 'pain barrier' which all guitar players must go through. After a few weeks the skin on the tops of your fingers will harden and once this happens, playing guitar chords will no longer hurt you.

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.

Don't try to learn 100's of guitar chords because probably you'll never use them. It's far better to stick to the main chords and families and try to put them into action as soon as you can through songs you like.

Guitar chords are fun, just have patience to practice and they will come.

Some beginners find the subject of guitar chords for songs a daunting prospect. There are so many songs and different ways of playing them that surely it requires a tremendous study of chords and memory power.

The truth is that popular music is quite predictable and in fact you hardly need more than 10 chords to cover the vast amount of songs heard every day on the radio or your own music collection.

Guitar chords for songs are the least of your worries. The real challenge in playing guitar is being about to change from one chord to the next quickly enough to keep up with the song. It’s here that all practice time is concentrated.

In case you are wondering, here are the most important guitar chords for songs – C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bm, D, A and E. That’s 10 chords and an entire world of easy guitar songs. Popular songs pride themselves on simplicity and this lends itself well to guitar playing for beginners.

Now as I’ve said, just learning guitar chords for songs is the easy part, anyone can do it without too much trouble. However, changing between them quickly is not a question of basic memory but more of mechanical ability. Your fingers must learn and develop their own memory for the shapes.

This is called ‘finger memory’ and it’s vital for every musician playing every kind of instrument. Without it, it’s impossible to develop any kind of fluency or ease.

Now the question is how best to practice guitar chords for songs? Well each website could present you with a different answer but here’s mine. You have to take pairs of chords and cycle them around and around with a drum track to keep in time. Having a drum track you can adjust is really important since you can create just the right amount of pressure by controlling its tempo.

Do this and your ability to perfect guitar chords for songs is going to sky rocket!