learn acoustic guitar chords - passing chords

As a beginner learning acoustic guitar chords it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of shapes, forms, types and variations possible. As proof of this it’s enough to pick up almost any chord book in a music store and browse through the hundreds of pages of chord diagrams available. As a beginner however you will not need to know anywhere near this number of chords in order to be able to play lots of popular guitar songs. The real truth behind lots of these complicated chord shapes is that they are used mostly in the progressions of more complicated musical forms such as Jazz.

As you already know it’s possible to play hundreds of popular guitar songs with a basic set of just 10 acoustic guitar chords. When you combine these open chords with the power of a Capo and the ability to change keys, the list of songs which become available for you to play gets even wider. This is one of the reasons why guitar is so popular as a modern instrument for people to learn to play, you can produce great sounding music with the most basic of chord shapes.

Once you have learned the initial 10 chords it’s possible to introduce some other very useful variations for song-playing. These particular chord tricks and variations are simple to learn, easy to play and once you acquire them and you’ll find yourself hearing them in songs everywhere. Passing chords are an excellent example of this. A passing chord is basically a transitional chord shape which aids the flow from one chord to another with a very strong baseline. In popular songs there are two principal passing chord shapes we need to learn, one occurs between the chords of G and E minor while the other happens between C and A minor.

It’s through learning these simple song-playing devices and altered acoustic guitar chords that your guitar playing will gradually extend out of a beginner’s level and into an intermediate level. As with everything in Guitar in a Nutshell, these new additions to your playing are introduced in a very logical, simple and user friendly way. It is our philosophy to only teach the things we know you will use often when playing songs, in this way our guitar tuition is based firmly in the real world of what you will commonly encounter. This makes our program of acoustic guitar chords concise and highly usable.

The most effective way to practise chords on acoustic guitar is cycle them in pairs using drum tracks set to various tempos. One of the secrets to improving your guitar chords and the rate at which you can change between is through the use of drum tracks to create a small amount of pressure where you have to get to the next chord shape in time to keep up with the beat. This will accelerate how quickly you master changing chords and will allow you to gain fluency beyond that of most average beginners.

As you progress through the guitar lessons you will be able to increase the number of chords you know through the addition of new chord families and useful chord extensions. When you build your knowledge of acoustic guitar chords in this way and by immediately implementing them into real song-playing it only goes to make your playing sound more confident and self assured.

Continue onto Acoustic Guitar Scales: Pentatonic Scale