Hi there! This video lesson is going to talk about basic chords, which are basically the open chords. Those are typically down the open position, which is at the end of the fretboard. The notes manipulators are usually on the first, second and third fret. Some strings are open, that's why are called open chords. They are very full, because you get some open note strings that are ringing. So basically some of the key factors that I consider when I am doing this, when I am playing these chords is that, I want to make sure that each string is sounding. There's no muting going on, no stringing happening and I show student this ability to play a chord and to basically play each string individually.
So what typically all happen is maybe curl of the hand around the fretboard will mute some strings, so you put your finger on one of these frets and the curl of your finger might touch the string below it. So you want to make sure that you are not dampening those strings, so you don't have a sound like this. You want that clear and real neat. Another factor that might cause some dampening or the strings to not be sounding is, if you are not pushing hard enough onto your string. So at the tips of your fingers, at the beginning of your guitar journey, your fingers are soft on the tips, the flesh there. So you want to develop calluses; they get a bit rough and hardened and will allow you to push on the strings and to provide the required force.
But, sometimes just because of all the fingers that you trying to push on the strings, you reduce the force on some of the fingers and so they don't sound. That'll take some practice, just be patient and keep trying to play these chords so that they sound individually. So when you play, let's say an E chord, and I have some of these chords outlined on my website. You basically are just picking the string. Make sure that you went until that point; you want to keep trying until you get that get that sound. The other thing to notice is the hand position. People ask a lot about that lot, some of my students. How do I fret these chords, where I put my thumbs and stuff like that.
The thumb is generally not horizontally behind the fretboard pointing like parallel to the neck, or vertically. It's somewhere in the range between those and it changes angle. But generally your thumb is kind of in the middle of the back of the fretboard. You are not too high up on the most part and you are not down low, and you want to make sure you don't have any unnecessary tension or strain in that hand. It shouldn't be that evil to be playing, but first you have to build up some strength in your hand, because you don't want to be pushing too hard and having a lot of strain. So, basically your arm is hanging down naturally by the side of your body, sometimes just might be out further if you are playing a lot higher on the fretboard. It's going to be closer to your body usually.
So you just want to make sure that be aware of any tension and unnecessary strain that you are putting on. Now, there is some force that has to be put on the back of the thumb. It's opposing, the fingers are fretting the notes. The other thing that students sometimes ask me is, where do I put my fingers on the frets, and that is another factor that will cause some buzzing or some muting where the string is not sounding properly. Now these Metal things are frets themselves, but when you put it down, say, behind the fret, you are actually shortening the string from the fret to the bridge.
So ideally you want to be fairly close to the fret. You may have to adjust where your fingers are for an A chord, like I showed. You've got your three fingers on the same fret, basically, so they're kind of scrunched in there. So obviously this finger is away from the fret, and the third finger is closer to the fret. But for the most part you want to be closer to the fret than away from it. A lot of times, I am playing in the middle. But you don't want to get too far away if you don't have to. But like I say the main factor is really making sure that the clarity is there.
So if we talk about some of the chords I am showing on my website, I am sure the C chord -- these chords are basically playing from the root, with the name of the chord, C chord you would be playing, lowest note would be the C. So there are all the strings above that, they're open. I'll get into this later, but you could eventually play those other notes too. But for now we'll just start with the root of the chord and if we are playing the C, then we'll be playing the C on the fifth fret and playing all the five strings below. So that's a C Chord.
A G chord plays all 6 strings and the G is on the lowest string here. Now if you notice that there's a big gap between my second and my third finger here, because the Gs are on the E strings, the two E strings, a low and a high. So there's a bit of a stretch there for you. I find that some students have trouble with that initially, but it's very comfortable after a while. The other way to play that is use your third and pinky to get the two Gs; you can have two but you still have a fairly large gap stretch between the third and fourth finger.
Another chord is E, which is this one, so you play all the six strings. A, which I showed earlier, you play the bottom five strings, starting with the A string. D, say, the bottom four strings. The other one is F, and that's probably the toughest one for beginners to learn because what you have to do is what they call bar, so whenever you play more than one string at a time with the same finger, you call that a bar or so, the F chord has these two on the first fret. It has these two notes played. So the trick is that you've got to play the other notes and then use your index finger to bar of two strings. You are not using the tip of your finger, you are using kind of the underside or the flashy part of finger. That is tricky because you have to push on the two strings to make sure it sounds clear. So we're going to make sure that was single sound.
What we are going to get into another lesson is explaining how those chords work. What notes are making up the chord and then how to alter those chords to make other chords like Minor chords and stuff like that, because all the ones that we have been talking about are Major chords. I'll explain what that means and then the other thing you want to be able to do is to play bar chords. I have mentioned bar is where it doesn't move the chord up the neck and the first finger usually bar is more than one string, maybe bar like five or six even strings. The beauty of that on the guitar is that you can then adjust those chords till you have a shape, basically, if there is a Major shape or a Minor shape. If you start moving that up the fretboard, you still have the same.
You can learn a whole bunch of chords instantly just by moving it around. Whereas the open chords that I showed you, if you start to move your fingers up, then you are shifting those notes up, real correspondingly, but then the open strings are still staying the same. So the chords don't make any sense a lot of times, because the open strings are staying the same but the other frets are moving up. So you are not keeping that same relationship between the notes. So, anyway, hopefully this will give you some pointers as to playing the chords and making sure that each note is ringing and we'll get into some strumming patterns and some other things in future lessons. So I hope you enjoyed that. See you later.
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