Learning guitar chords may initially seem intimidating. With practice and repetition though, they will eventually become easier to comprehend and play.
A triad chord is the easiest chord to assemble. A triad is composed of three notes separated by an interval of a third.
1. You’ll feel like a rock star
Learning the chords to your favorite songs will provide a wonderful sense of achievement, helping to keep you motivated as you learn the guitar.
Establishing your ability with basic open chords, then bar chords will strengthen your fingers to play more songs with greater ease. At some point in time, however, you may wish to add power chords – another common choice on electric guitar – into your repertoire.
As part of your effort in appreciating these chords, it will also be necessary to gain an understanding of intervals. Here is an excellent article about intervals that should help get you going; this will enable you to better appreciate how all the chords you’ve been playing up until now fit together to form triads.
2. You’ll feel like a king
Learn the classic song Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley on acoustic guitar with this simple fingerstyle arrangement for beginners. It uses only a handful of chords, making it accessible even to newcomers. Furthermore, its relaxed down-up strumming pattern makes playing along and singing along easy for anyone!
This lesson in C uses all 1st position open chord shapes so it should not prove difficult for novice guitarists even without previous experience with barre chords. To make things simpler, feel free to capo on the second fret if necessary.
3. You’ll feel like a queen
As you learn guitar chords, you will discover they’re more than simply static shapes to memorize; rather, you will also learn how to assemble intervals on the fretboard to form various types of chords.
Chord diagrams provide the easiest way to visualize how you should position your fingers on the fretboard for every note in a chord. The X’s represent muted or not played strings while O’s represent open strings.
Use these simple tools to quickly build up more advanced chord progressions, then begin adding in more complex triads, diminished chords, and extensions.
4. You’ll feel like a prince
We will examine some of Prince’s signature guitar riffs. A master guitarist himself, Prince was known for producing and writing iconic tunes like Purple Rain.
Chords can be thought of as combinations of intervals. Therefore, this tutorial should feel natural to those familiar with intervals and how they function.
Just remember to number your fingers: Your index finger counts as 1, your middle two, your ring three and pinky four – then fret the chord as shown here using these numbers – it should sound similar to C major chord, yet with its own unique characteristics!
5. You’ll feel like a princess
Beginner guitar players may find chord charts dauntingly complex. Don’t worry though; those X’s and O’s don’t represent some strange version of Tic-Tac-Toe! Xs indicate strings which should be muted while Os are open strings.
To play a C major chord, simply strum all 6 strings using fingers numbered from 1 to 4, remembering the major interval gives this triad its signature sound of being stable and resolved (rather than dissonant or discordant). Minor triads follow similar principles but this post won’t cover them. Focus first on getting these basic shapes down.
6. You’ll feel like a king
Beginner guitar players can benefit greatly from using chord charts as an educational aid when first starting out on the instrument, as these charts serve as visual guides to their fretboard and identify which strings to play. Most charts contain symbols with “X’s and O’s”, showing which notes you should play and where to place their fingers on the fretboard.
At their core, chords are groups of three notes that work together to produce sound; this basic type is called a triad. If intervals are unfamiliar to you, I highly suggest reading this article before going further with learning about chords and music theory. Doing so will provide a firm foundation from which you can build upon as your knowledge expands about music theory and chords.