Easy love songs for guitar can bring smiles to all, especially when learned using chords that are straightforward to play.
G C D chords are among the easiest chords to learn and can help you play lots of great songs! The trick lies in using a calypso strumming rhythm; down-up, down-up.
Major Chords
Major chords form the cornerstones of music, so understanding them is of vital importance to any guitarist’s repertoire. Many beginners don’t believe musical theory to be necessary in order to play songs they love – yet having knowledge of basic chords will make you a much stronger guitarist!
Triad chords, commonly referred to as triads, consist of three notes that are all one third apart and can be found all across the fretboard in regular tuning. Triads provide an ideal starting point for beginners as they can be played without changing your tuning.
Strumming these chords requires you to use all six strings at once when strumming, with some notes being doubled up – for instance E major requires both your second and third fingers when playing it. Learning these chords will provide a solid basis upon which to learn more advanced ones such as minors and sus4’s as well as progressions and cadences.
Minor Chords
Chords create sounds that elicit emotion, giving musical form to emotions and moods being conveyed in songs. Major chords are the most widely used; however, minors also play an essential part in songwriting. There may be subtle but significant differences between major and minor chords which should help your guitar playing mature further.
Minor chords can be broken down into three parts: root, minor third and perfect fifth (for help understanding intervals see our guide on understanding scale degrees). Listen out for this progression in Beach Boys classic California Girls to hear it for yourself.
Minor key music typically features minor tonic and subdominant chords; musicians also commonly employ minor seventh chords to add brightness. These take the form of minor triads combined with adding the flat seventh degree from the minor scale; it gives these chords their characteristic brightness that contrasts nicely with their darker, melancholy counterparts – such as in Coldplay’s Clocks or Ho Hey by The Lumineers.
Sus4 Chords
Sus chords can add movement and tension to guitar chord progressions, serving both as substitute chords and creating tension within your music.
Sus2 and sus4 chords resemble power chords in that they do not contain major or minor thirds; rather, they replace either the second (sus2) or fourth scale degree of a chord’s root with an interval that creates suspense and tension by replacing these scale degrees with less comfortable intervals that add suspense and tension to each measure.
Suspended chords offer the listener time to anticipate what comes next; other musicians prefer more dramatic transitions by switching between suspended and regular chords. For example, in The Police’s “Message in a Bottle”, multiple suspended chords were used to build tension in their song – these easy triads provide unexpected tension that is both unexpected and interesting! Practice various voicings of suspension chords before adding them into your chord progressions.
Sus5 Chords
Sus chords provide an exciting way to add tension and drama without going over the top. By replacing the third of a major or minor triad with either a fourth or second note, sus chords create dissonance which resolves back into major or minor chords once resolved.
This creates a sense of movement within the chord that may otherwise be lacking with other triads, like power and diminished chords. You can hear this effect in songs like Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams’ Summer of 69 where there are multiple sus twiddles moving the progression forward.
Lear how to play these special chords will help you break out of a chord rut and add variety to your chord progressions, as well as build anticipation of key changes in songs.