How To Play Guitar Chords

Learning how to play guitar chords is easy. You just need to know how to interpret chord blocks. If you do that, you can play any chord you want on your precious instrument. You'll find them in sheet music above the stuff.

Chords blocks look like diagrams and they show you how a chord is played. If your learn to read guitar chord blocks, you'll immediately know which frets are to be played by which fingers and which strings you'll need to play.

This is what chord blocks/diagrams in sheet music usually look like:

So here is how to play guitar chords reading chord diagrams:

• Chord blocks always contain 5 horizontal and 6 vertical lines.

• The thickest horizontal line at the top represents the "nut". It's the thickest horizontal line on the neck of your guitar at the top. It's made of some kind of medium-hard material.

• The horizontal lines represent the frets. They are metal strips that are fixed into the fingerboard. What string you press will decide what pitch you play.

• We already know that the first, thickest horizontal line represents the nut. The next line represents the first fret, the next one the second and so on.

• The six vertical lines stand for the strings/notes. They are not in the same order as on the piano. Their order from left to right is always: E, A, D, G, B, E.

• The chord name is always above the chord block. Therefore if you've already learned how to play a chord, you might not need to "read" the chord block. If you'd like to read it, however, it's easy to do, fortunately. (On HitJerker-Songwriting.com you'll also find a great chord chart and information on how to learn thousands chords literally in minutes.)

• There can be two types of symbols under the chord name and above the chord block. If there is an "X" above a note, it means that you shouldn't play that string. If there is an open circle above a string, it means, that you should "play this string open".

• We can talk about open strings when you don't press any of the frets when playing the guitar. Also, if (in the chord diagram) there is a circle that's filled, it means that you have to play the note on that specific string and fret shown in the diagram.

• So the last thing to know about reading chord blocks is what the numbers in circles mean on the vertical lines. First you must consider in which fret it is on then on which string. In the image above, for example, there is the number 1 in a circle on the right. It means that you have to put your 1st finger on the 2nd string at the 1st fret. Oh yes, and there is sometimes a note with a diamond in the chord diagrams and it means the root of the chord and the note that you will start from to move the chord into different keys.


I sincerely hope this explanation of how to play guitar chords was clear enough. If not, I guess if you just look at the image above it'll be easy to understand. I borrowed the chord block explanation image above from the Learn and Master Guitar lesson book. There is even more information on how to play guitar chords in it. However, I'm not a guitar player rather a pianist so I haven't tried this course of theirs but I've heard it's amazing. But I have the Learn and Master Piano course and I love it! Courses by this company always come with DVD instruction by someone who's really one of the best at what they do. They also include a lesson book, workshop book, audio CD's to practice with, etc. These courses are great for beginners and more advanced players alike. I know I've learned a lot from them!




Related pages:


More on Guitar Chords and Free Guitar Chord Charts 


What chords are made up of 


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