How to Embellish Simple Chords on your Guitar

Freeandeasyguitar.com Hey guys. It's Aaron. This lesson right here, I want to count that and show you guys some fun stuff that you can do with these regular old chords that will you give you some extra flavor and then it will really make it sound like you’re really, really great even if your just playing simple chords. So I’m going to give you some beginner chords that we’ve talked about before. So I’m going send you the shapes of them. But first, what I want you to make is I want you to make a C chord. So just real quick, your ring finger is on the third fret of your A string. This is your fifth string. Your middle finger is on the second fret of your D string and this is your fourth string and your pointer finger is on the first fret of your second string which is your B string. So you can strum a regular C chord like this. [Demonstration] By adding in some modern embellishments you can make it sound something like this— [Demonstration] So what I'm going to do is I’m going to show you a couple of things you can do with these fingers in the C chord position. One thing you can do when you’re strumming is you can take this ring finger off of the third fret. So, you take that ring finger off the third fret of the A string. Take it off and then you strum the chord you can hammer back on. We’ve talked about hammer ons and learning it in the last videos. You can do the same thing with this middle finger on this B string so strum it or you can pull off to major fret and you pull down. You can do the same thing with your pointer finger and take it off and put it back on. We’re going to have it on and pull off. Also, on this B string here where your pointer finger is touching, you can add your pinky finger to the third fret of that B string, the third fret B string. [Demonstration] That’s some cool stuff with the C chord. The other thing I want you to do is make a four finger of G chord. With the fourth finger D chord, don’t mess with this low E string. Don’t do this. It’s not going to sound good for the chord but the good thing you can do is you can play this five strings to your A string and you take your pointer finger off. So, that one the regular G chord and take it off and play the note and hammer on or play the note and put your point finger off. So you play the note once not touching it. Another thing you can do with the G chord, or Cadd9 chord which uses the G but it's moved down here. If you want to try, you can start that pinky up to the fifth fret on high so, it wasn’t a three, stretch up to the fifth fret. Now, you make your G chord sound like this— [Demonstration] And make your Cadd9 chord sound like this— [Demonstration] Another cool thing you can do with the regular C or the Cadd9 is to slide it up. You keep your fingers in the same strings, same distance between each other but you just strum it, slide your finger up two frets. And when you do that, it becomes from a C chord becomes a D chord. But you want to see the D chord play is much like this and you’ll see it played like this but if you ever have songs it says C chord and the next chord is the D chord, you can do C. So everything of each finger of two frets so we go from one first fret the same from third fret to third, fourth, fifth fret, that’s a D. With your D chord, the original D chord, we used this on the first song in our lesson and you can add your pinky on high and take it off. You can take your middle finger off and you play it open. You can put your pinky finger back on. So you can do something like— [Demonstration] and stuff like that. One thing you can do to your A chord is you can add your pinky. It gets along this B string or two string. You have your ring finger on the second fret. You can add your pinky on the third fret to give that another there. So this is what it sounds like regular. Add the pinky on, regular, pinky. It gives a little bit of different tone. Most of the other chords you can experiment with but you can do a lot with the same thing. You can take your pointer finger off, that’s a C chord Am, I take my pointer finger off. You can also add this pinky on your third fret and your B string with the Am. That’s all in the C chord, just adding your little fingers. So have some fun with that and I hope these lessons have been helping you guys out. Remember as always, if you have any questions, send me an email to questions@freeandeasyguitar.com and at this point, I think you guys are ready to delve into the drop down menu above and try to find some songs that you recognize and you want to learn to play and just give it a shot. If you ran to something that's too difficult for you right now, take your time and go onto another song and then maybe in a couple of weeks when you feel like you want to give another shot, come back. A lot of times, what you’ll see is a song may have been too tough for you at that time and you skipped it. When you come back to it, it seems so easy because you advanced a lot in that short period of time. So, good luck. Remember telling everybody about freeandeasyguitar.com. It’s always great for new people to learn the guitar especially as well as the music. It brings a lot of color to people’s lives and it's a great stress reliever and it's just a great instrument to learn. So, tell your friends and I hope these lessons have been helping you guys. Take care, see you.