Johnny Hiland Band

When learning how to play the guitar, the chords tend to be the most difficult thing to master. Learning them can be a massive challenge. To begin with, you are using multiple fingers to play multiple strings all at once! The combinations and finger placements can appear very confusing.

There are a couple of misconceptions when it comes to finger placement. For instance, don’t think that the size of your fingers has anything to do with lack of success. This is absolutely not true. However, most of the problem when playing guitar chords is hand PLACEMENT. You especially need to learn how to properly place your left hand and fingers.

Are you struggling with your lessons? Check to see if your left thumb is positioned high up on the back of the guitar neck. If it is, then the placement is wrong. Your left thumb should sit on the LOWER portion of the back. It needs to be behind the second finger. Sure, it will probably feel uncomfortable at first, but it is the correct posture for many styles.

You need to remember this posture. Sure, it’s simple to play a couple of songs or notes and then return to your old habit, but that will only encourage the bad habit. Remember: practicing good habits is crucial when learning guitar chords.

Common Mistakes
Successfully learning is heavily prevented by lack of support and knowledge. When you are struggling to play a five string chord, you are probably making two big mistakes:
1.    For starters, attempting to master a five string chord is a mistake when you’re just learning. Instead, you should focus on a two or three string chord, as they are much easier to learn. Later on down the road you can move on to more complex chords.
2.    Secondly, proper placement of the fingers is essential. For instance, it wasn’t until after a few months of playing when I realized that I was practicing incorrectly. The tutorial videos at the Learn & Master Guitar website showed me that I was incorrect with my finger placement.

If you want to learn chords, it is important to learn the correct way, which can be tough without an expert, or at least some type of formal training. However, guitar lessons usually aren’t cheap.

You need to check out a resource such as Learn and Master Guitar. That way, you will have access to many techniques, lessons, and tips that you would learn from a private teacher. The best thing is, these online lessons are way more affordable!

Lessons + Practice = Tons of success!

Make sure you take some lessons, no matter what form they come in. You aren’t going to learn guitar chords and songs without good lessons. Whether you have the money and time for private lessons or simply come across a good lesson online isn’t relevant. Just find yourself a good lesson, learn from it, and practice!

Practice is crucial. It’s recommended that you set aside a half hour to an hour every single day for guitar practice. This may not seem like a lot of time, but it’s actually best to not play more than a half hour or so each day. This is because you may become more or pick up bad habits. Instead, just set aside 30 minutes or so every day and make sure there are no distractions.

Spend a good fifteen minutes focused exclusively on the chords. Begin with basic and simple chords. Within a couple of weeks, you will not only play them like a pro, but you will also switch back and forth between them with ease!

Successful guitar chords learning requires practice and dedication just as much as it requires skill. Make up your mind that you are going to learn no matter what! You really can do this. Remember that chords are pretty much the foundation for every song, therefore you should be able to play a TON of great songs once you learn the chords!

Are you ready to dive in and get some awesome video lessons so that you can learn from the pros?

Copyright Liam Gibson (Stage Guitarist)

For most, guitar chords are the most difficult part of learning how to play. These series of notes can be difficult to remember, and can challenge even the most talented guitarists.

Get The Most From Your Guitar Chord Lessons

When you learn to play guitar chords, you are using multiple fingers and strings at the same time. The combinations can be awkward, and it can be very difficult to retain all of the information that you need.

A common problem for beginners is hand placement. Many guitarists, when first starting out, get discouraged because they have difficulty getting a clean note. This is especially true of people with larger hands. The reason for this is not about hand size at all, but about hand position.

If you are struggling to learn guitar chords, check the position of the thumb on your fret hand. If your thumb is high on the back of the neck, your position is wrong. It should actually be sitting on the lower portion of the back of the neck, behind the second finger. It will be uncomfortable at first, but it will give you a much better reach at the frets, and a cleaner sound. It is very easy to revert back to old habits, so make sure that you spend some time practicing this position. Concentrate more on your hand position than your playing, and soon, it will become natural to you.

The guitar is very difficult to learn if you do not have the right knowledge or support. For example, if you have a five string chord that you are having trouble with, there are probably two main problems. First, if you are just starting out, attempting a five string chord just doesn’t make sense. This is an advanced technique. Focus on two or three string chords first, then work your way up. Second, correct finger placement is crucial. The trick to learning is having good resources. You can find videos and information all over the Internet, at sites like learnandmasterguitar.com, that can help you. Just a small change in finger position can make a huge difference.

The best way to learn guitar chords is with some form of training. However, guitar lessons are not cheap. Internet resources like learnandmasterguitar.com can give you many of the same techniques, tips, and lessons that an instructor can, but for much less.

Definitely make sure that you find some form of training. Learning guitar chords is difficult enough without going through everything on your own. If you try to teach yourself, you will be lucky to learn the chords within months. Whether you have the time or money for an instructor, or simply find a few good lessons online, make sure that you have some form of training. Once you have a chance to learn, all you need is practice.

Practice is the most important part of learning to play guitar and chords. You should set aside a half hour a day for practice. While many guitarists have longer practice sessions, beginners tend to get bored very quickly, or start developing bad habits. Once you have developed your technique, you can begin to lengthen your sessions.

Make sure that you have no distractions. Find a quiet room and pick a time of day when you have the most energy. Since chords are such an important part of guitar playing, you should devote half of your practice time exclusively to them. Start with simple chords, and work your way up. Within two weeks, you should be playing the basic chords like a pro, with clean and easy chord progressions. It takes patience and dedication to learn and master guitar chords, not just knowledge and skill.

Keep in mind that guitar chords and songs are directly related. Once you learn the chords, you can play thousands of different songs, or even write your own.

Copyright Liam Gibson (Stage Guitarist)

Learning guitar chords does not have to be difficult, but there are some mistakes that many beginners make that can be avoided.

The Top 10 Mistakes

1. Giving up too soon

No matter what you decide to learn, you will not get it right on the first try. This is especially true of guitar. When you learn the guitar chords, chances are that you will have some trouble, but you must stick with it. Many beginners give up on a chord at the worst possible time. They learn the finger position, and they can occasionally strum it cleanly, but they see no improvement from this point. Once you get to this point, it’s only a matter of time. You have the basics, you just need to keep practicing.

2. Lack of visualization

When you are forming a chord, visualization is very important. You have to “see” where each finger is going to move to before it happens. The best way to speed up your chord changes is to look at where your fingers currently are, and think about where they need to be. Then, you visualize the shortest route they need to take to get there. There are times when you won’t need to move much, because some of the basic chords use common notes.

3. Challenging yourself too much

Chord changes, or progressions, are the best way to master guitar chords. The problem is that many beginners choose difficult progressions, and get discouraged when they can’t get it right. Make sure you choose easier progressions, like G to A, E to A, or D to G. They might seem easy, but repetition will train you for the more advanced chord changes.

4. Lack of finger strength

Beginning guitarists do not understand the value of finger strength. This should be obvious, since the fingers are used to play the guitar. To build up your finger strength, a great thing to try is wide scale exercises. Also, there are other exercises involving pushing down hard on the string of your guitar, finger press-ups, or even finger weights.

5. Looking at your hands too often

Once you learn to play guitar chords, you should be able to do so without looking at your hands. The finger position should become second nature. You don’t see professionals looking down all the time while they’re playing, do you? You should be able to switch between open chords without looking at your hands.

6. Practicing one chord at a time

Through the use of books, videos, or even instructors, beginning guitarists have gotten into the habit of practicing only one guitar chord at a time. This is a huge mistake, and will actually take longer to learn. The best and fastest way to learn chords is in groups of three. When you give your brain a varying pattern of three chords to learn, this is more likely to solidify the information. It will help you remember the fingering, and it will help you learn chord progressions.

7. Hiding your pinky

It seems a little odd, but a great deal of beginners tend to move their pinky out of the way when it is not in use. All of your fingers should be hovering over the fretboard at all times. Getting into this habit will help you learn more advanced chords later.

8. Not understanding the root note

Many people do not know what the root note of a chord is. The root note is a chord’s bass note. It determines what string you begin strumming from. For example, the root note of an E chord is an E, played by strumming an open low E string, or your thickest string. What this means is that you begin strumming from the E string when you are playing an E chord.

9. Not picking the chord

When beginners are playing guitar chords, they will often notice dead notes within the chord. Usually, this is caused by a fingering problem. Many beginners will simply keep strumming the chord until they get it right. This is a brute force method of learning, and a great deal of wasted practice time. To avoid this, try picking the chord instead. By picking each individual string, you can isolate the problem area more efficiently. Then, you can apply more pressure on that string or fix your finger position to get a better note.

10. Not using all your senses

To make it easy to learn guitar chords, you should look at every angle. You should look at pictures of someone playing the chord, look at a chord chart, and even watch a video of someone playing the chord. This will help you learn where your fingers should be, and how to get them there. Of course, you can’t play a chord correctly until you have heard the way it is supposed to sound, as well. Processing all of this information will help you visualize the correct technique.

Copyright Liam Gibson (Pro Guitarist)

Perhaps the first challenge faced by advancing guitar players is learning a core group of basic chords. Basic chords are the backbone of most pop and rock songs, and therefore provide the harmony to the melody and instrumental solos.

Rhythm guitar that is based on basic chords produces some of the most memorable riffs, including “Back in Black” by AC/DC and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who. The amazing thing is, that by learning simple guitar chords, you will be equipped to play these songs and hundreds of others!

First, the definition of a chord needs to be established. A chord is 3 or more different notes played together. In the instance of the guitar, this means that at least 3 strings are plucked or strummed simultaneously. Since guitars have 6 strings, the maximum number of notes in a chord is 6.

All these chords can be placed in 1 of 3 groups based on the structure of the chord: Seventh, Minor, or Major. Each of these groups has its own “sound”. Major chords sound complete and strong. Minor chords can evoke a somber mood, and Seventh chords are jazzy, yet somewhat incomplete sounding.  Keep all this in mind when taking your guitar chords lessons.

Not everyone agrees on the standard list of “basic guitar chords”. However, there’s a general consensus that the list is of somewhere between -18 basic guitar chords that every guitarist must know. These are the chords that are used in all genres of music, from rock to country and even classical.  No matter where you are on your path, you should take some time to learn and master all the basic chords.

So, what are they? Our basic table includes the minor and major chords from four common keys: D, C, G, and A. These are played as open chords. As you learn the guitar chords, you will find that open chords are easier to play than more advanced chords.

The list of minor and major guitar chords includes: A Major (A), A Minor (Am), C, D, Dm, E, Em, F, & G.

These chords can be learned best if you think of them as “families” by the key. The “families” can be combinations of great sounding chord sequences. Using this family approach is much more interesting than just memorizing a bunch of them in no particular order!

The chord families are as follows:

“A” Family (Key of “A”) – A, D, E
“D” Family (Key of “D”) – D, Em, G, A
“G” Family (Key of “G”) – G, Am, C, D, Em
“C” Family (Key of “C”) – C, Dm, Em, F, G

Tips for learning basic chords:

1.    Choose a chord family, stick with it, and master it. This’ll give you quick success.

2.    Use a chord chart as a resource tool. A chord chart shows each chord with exact finger positions.

3.    Look online to find the chords for an easy song that is based on the chords you wish to learn. Many popular songs feature easy to learn guitar chords.

4.    Ensure that each string sounds right. Take some time to make sure that each string sounds clearly.

5.    Practice, practice, and practice some more! Every day, practice regularly. Change from one chord to another, and keep practicing until you can do it rapidly!

6.    Master all of the basic chords first. Only then move on to more advanced ones (Barre). First things first! After you learn easy guitar chords, you’ll find that learning more advanced ones comes easier!

7.    Expand with seventh chords. As for the next step, you can easily expand on basic knowledge of chords by adding seventh and minor 7th chords.

8.    Have fun with all the new skills you develop after learning guitar chords! Play a small set of five or so songs at a time and you will develop more confidence!

Copyright Liam Gibson (Pro Guitarist)