If you are a brand-new guitar player and have no idea what chords you should learn. My suggestion is to start with these 8 chord shapes, they represent very commonly used chords and they have relatively easy fingerings for beginners to start with.
These chords are going to be really hard for you as a beginner because you have not built up any guitar callouses and you have zero guitar-related muscle memory in your system. Check out these super easy chord fingerings, the easiest I could find!
Learning chords is a challenge, but a bigger challenge for most beginners is switching between chords. Try out these super simple chord combinations for practice. These should get the blood flowing and the left hand moving!
I started a series called “Open String Fun” and it uses a number of chords in one key that all utilize the open strings on your guitar. From decent beginner guitarist to pro, everyone could have a lot of fun with this series:
| Open String Fun in A Minor | Open String Fun in D Major |
In my opinion, the 3 most important chord families to learn in the beginning are MAJOR TRIADS, MINOR TRIADS, and DOMINANT 7th CHORDS.
Triads are guitar chords built from 3 notes. That doesn’t mean that when you play them you are only hitting 3 strings. For example, a C Major Triad is built off the notes C, E, and G, so a typical C Major guitar chord may be built like this: CEGCE. So the C and E notes appear more than once in that particular version of the chord.
If you understand your Pentatonic Scale shapes, then the following videos should be very helpful. They show all the major and minor triads as they fit into that scale:
| Visualizing Major Triads from within the Pentatonic Scale | Visualizing Minor Triads from within the Pentatonic Scale |
Dominant 7th chords are used a lot in pop music and songwriting, and they are very prominent in the styles of Jazz and Blues. So learning them is a must!!!
more to come…..
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-Sean