If you have a burning desire to learn to play guitar chords then stick around. It does not matter whether you want to play lead guitar in a band or just accompany your singing on the acoustic guitar, the principles of learning guitar chords are the same. I will talk about the easiest kinds of chords to play and how guitarists learn thousands of songs with very little effort. After reading my little essay you will have the basic understanding of guitar chords that will give you direction in your quest to become a guitarist.
If you have watched advanced guitar players at concerts or on TV you might have been discouraged by how complicated guitar chords appear to be. It is true that some guitar songs or instrumentals do call for chord shapes and changes that require alot of practice but you can easily become an accomplished electric or acoustic guitarist without being a virtuoso. It is quite possible to stay with easy guitar chords for your whole career.
The first thing you need to do is find a list of songs that you want to learn to play. The first criterion for choosing songs is whether you like them. The others have to do with the use of open chords and chord families which we will now take a look at. Apart from your personal enjoyment, the use of songs as tools for learning chords has a practical value: it is much easier to learn groups of chords rather than one at a time because changing from one chord to the other helps your muscle memory to learn the fingerings.
Another thing that simplifies the process of learning guitar chords is the fact that popular music relies heavily on a form that uses only three chords for any song. This is not a hard and fast rule but you will find it holds true for most popular songs. An effective way to classify chords is to separate them into families which are simply combinations of chords that sound well together. In the key of A you have A, D and E. In the key of D the chords are D, E minor, G and A. In the key of G they are G, A minor, C, D, and E minor. And the family of chords for the key of C is C, D minor, E minor, F and G. To make your guitar practice time most effective begin with learning one chord family at a time and finding "three chord" songs that contain your chords.
The key to beginning as a guitarist is to learn what are called "open" chords. These are chords that only require you to use two or three fingers to make the chord shapes. Open chords are played in the first position on the guitar fretboard, that is, within the first three frets. An example of an open chord is the E minor chord:
E--------0---------------
B--------0---------------
G--------0---------------
D--------2---------------
A--------2---------------
E--------0----------------
The E minor chord requires you to place two fingers at the second fret on the fifth and fourth strings. What could be easier?
If you want to become an electric guitar player, you might be interested to know that power chords are the simplest to play. Power chords usually only need two fingers and are combined with the use of distortion to fry the brains of rock music lovers of all ages. So you have something to look forward to.
