Beginner Guitar Chords Lesson

Hey guys! Welcome to the second lesson of a series of Ten Basic Guitar Lessons brought to you by TheGuitarLesson.com. I’m Tom Fontana and I’m really excited today since in the first lesson, we didn’t actually make any real music. We just learned the basic guitar picking and fretting. But today, we’ll learn several major and minor chords and you’ll be able to use these to play tons of songs in the coming lessons. It’ll take some work but it’ll be way more than worth it in the end. You’ll see, trust me. I want to start by telling you that all our lessons will contain our chord diagrams when we play any given chord. You’ll see it on the screen soon. The diagram—it will contain the chord shape and the fingering, so it’s really a good reference when we’re learning the basic chords right now but also in the coming songs that we will be playing later on. So let’s just have a look at the first chord. It will be the C Major. I’m going to ask you to place your first finger on to fret 1 of the string B, your second finger on to fret 2 of string D, and your third finger on to fret 3 of string A, and just strum all strings from string A. And now, take your hand off the fret board and shake your fingers off a bit, and try to put your fingers back into the same position. Now, shake off and return. We’re going to learn several chords today and I want you to do this with every chord. And it’s really important that when you place your fingers back, you make sure that the chord still rings true and your fingers have not moved out of position. So there shouldn’t be any clicks or overtones from the other strings, just make sure that your fingers are only holding down the strings that they’re supposed to be. Now, just hold the chord, shake off, hold, shake off technique. It’s really effective and improving the muscle in your hands. We just want to use when you’re practicing the chords. It will be hard at first but your fingers will get used to it. First, they’ll just go all over the place probably. Everyone started out that way. But with enough practice, you won’t even need to look at it. You’ll just—your hand will just go there automatically going to the chord shape on the proper frets without even thinking about it. So that’s what you’re aiming for. This will take some time but just practice it and it will come very soon, okay? So don’t worry about it. So let’s have a look at our next chord, the D Major. I’m going to ask you to place your first finger on to fret 2 of string G, your second finger on to fret 2 of the high E string like this, and your third finger on to fret 3 of string B. And you won’t be strumming strings E and A with this chord, just the four strings after them. I’m plucking the individual notes to see if they ring clearly. Otherwise, they’ll rattle and won’t sound nice. And you can pivot your wrist to find the most comfortable position, so just try it out. And once again, just practice this chord, pause the video, take your hand off, shake your fingers off, put it back on to the D Major shape and just do that several times. Keep in mind that all the strings have to stand clear individually, so just get used to the correct finger placement, okay? So let’s move on to the next chord. This will be an A Major and you’ll put your first finger on to the 2nd fret of string D like this, your second finger on to fret 2 of string G, and your third finger on to fret 2 of string B, and strum from A. And the E is not used in this chord and that’s very important. This chord doesn’t really squeeze. Hence, you have to put three fingers on to the same fret on neighboring strings, so those with big hands will probably find this one a bit more difficult, but I can recommend an alternate fingering. So instead of your first, second, and third finger, you can use your second, third, and fourth fingers. This will help but either way, this chord will take so I’m getting used to. Don’t worry about it, just stack your fingers in there, make all the notes sound clear when you practice and you’ll learn it very soon, okay? Okay, good job! So let’s move on. We learn only major chords until now and it’s time for our first minor chord. I’ll just show you and you’ll hear the difference right away. It’s after the A Major we just learned right now. This is the A Minor. That’s your first finger on string B at fret 1, your second finger on string D at fret 2, and your third finger on string G at fret 2 as well, and pick strings A through E. Now, I’ll just show you the A Minor and then the A Major one after another, and just listen to their sound, okay? [Demonstration] Did you hear it? The minor had more of a sad sound and the major had more of a happy sound. That is true for all the major and minor variations of chords. So just practice the A Minor fingering a bit, maybe pause the video as well, and then continue when you want to. We have to move on now, have a look at another major and minor chord variation. That will be the E Major and E Minor. We’ll first look at the E Major and that’s very similar to the A Minor we just learned, but we move every finger up by one string. So that’s your first finger at string G fret 1, your second finger at fret 2 string A, and your third finger at fret 2 string D, and you strum every string this time. And the E Minor is really easy from here. You just release your first finger. Or if you’re not changing from the E Major, you can place your first finger where your second finger was just now on fret 2 string A, and your third finger on to fret 2 string D. Now, I’ll let you just practice the E Major and E Minor on your own. Listen to the happy tone on the major and the sad tone on the minor, okay? So just pause the video here if you need to practice it with the shake-off technique that we learned in the beginning and just do that for both chords, okay? Let’s move on to our next chord, the chord of the day, the G Major. Place your first finger on to fret 2 of string A then your second finger on to fret 3 of string E, and that’s the low E, and your pinkie on to fret 3 of the high E string. Now, this is already a G Major but we can get a much fuller sounding G chord by placing our third finger on to fret 3 of string B right about your pinkie. So that just sounds better but it’s a bit harder. Here’s another alternative for fingering the G Major. So choose whichever you like and when we start learning songs and changing in between chords, you’ll actually use the fingering, which is the easiest to change to from the chord that you played beforehand, okay? But that comes in another lesson. So just practice the G as well. Take your hands off, put it back, practice it with all the fingerings and just pause the video if you need to or practice it later on, okay? Good! So let’s move on to the D Minor and if you’ll recall, we already learned the D Major in the beginning of the lesson. That was your first finger on string G fret 2, your second finger on string E fret 2, and your third finger on string B at fret 3, and you only strum strings D, G, B, and E like this. [Demonstration] Okay, so let’s go to D Minor now and that’s your first finger on string E of fret 1, your second finger on string G fret 2, and your third finger on string B at fret 3, and again, you just strum from string D. Now, listen to the D Major and Minor. [Demonstration] I’m sure you hear the difference between the major and minor variations of the chords now. The minors are a bit sad, a bit darker and almost sort of pull you down. You know, music is all about emotions, while majors, majors are very lively chords. They just make you happy and just want to make you smile. And really because music is all about expressing emotions, for example, composers use music to influence our emotional state all the time. Even at the movies when you’re watching a love scene for example, they’ll use music that will make you sort of fall in love and get in the mood to cuddle with your girlfriend or something like that. And when you’re watching a horror flick for example, you’ll just have a dark music. So I’m sure you’ve experienced this already. Actually, once you learn these chords and learn how to change between them in the next lesson, and eventually there are songs that you can play, you’ll really start noticing the difference. You’ll go home one day and if you’re feeling a bit down, you’ll probably play the minor chords. But if you’re feeling cheerful, you’ll play major chords. So it’s really—music is all about emotions. Now, let’s have a look at a pretty difficult beginner’s chord, the F Major chord. Your first finger will be at fret 1 on both strings B and E, your second finger on string G at fret 2, and your third finger on string D fret 3 and pluck from D. Now, this first finger part is a bit hard. You have to hold down two strings at once. You have to push your thumb really hard against the back of the neck as if you’re pinching the guitar really hard with your thumb and first finger. That’s how you can exert enough pressure. You can try moving your wrist around and just find the most comfortable position for your finger. So just experiment with that. It won’t be easy at first. I still remember learning the F Major for the first time. It just seemed impossible but if you practice it enough, you will see that it gets easier and easier with time. Just don’t neglect this chord, practice it everyday until all the strings will ring clear there, okay? Just practice all the other chords that we learned today. You will be using them in literally tons and tons of songs, as well as all the fingering, practice it everyday and really soon it will become second nature, trust me. I went through it; everyone went through it. So this is the end of the second lesson from the Ten Basic Guitar Lessons. We’ll be learning how to change in between chords in the next lesson, and we’ll start learning songs in lesson three as well, so just check it out. It’s on the web page at TheGuitarLesson.com. Good! So that’s it for today. See you on the next lesson then, I guess. Bye!