How to Play the C and G Chords

Hey everybody, it's Aaron with freeandeasyguitar.com. In the next chords that I’m going to teach you, I’m going to teach you two chords. I want to teach you a G chord and I want to teach you a C chord. These are going to be the first two chords that you can move back and forth when you practice. So, we’re going to go ahead and start off with the C chord. What we talked earlier Am with your pointer finger was on this second string, your B string at the 1st fret. That’s where it's going to be for C chord. So, you count your second string and on the 1st fret, your pointer finger goes there. You can take your middle finger next and you’re going to skip this third string, nothing is on the third string. On the fourth string, it takes the middle finger and put it right down at the 2nd fret and you take this ring finger and put it on the fifth string, 3rd fret. That’s your C chord there. So, your five string, you’re A string sounds like this because your ring finger is on the 3rd fret, the next string down. Your four string, your middle finger in the 2nd fret and it sounds like this. The next one down to the third string which is your G string is open, it sounds like this. Your two string is your B string, pointer finger, 1st fret in your high E and nothing on, it’s open. So, all together, the C chord individually. [Demonstration] Now, the next thing you want to go to, I’ll teach you the G chord. There’s two ways to play a G. The way that I play—I played both G chords, okay. Depending on whether I play a four-finger G which looks like this or a three finger G which looks like this, it depends on what chords I’m playing with. So, if you go back to your C, the pointer finger is on the 1st fret of your two string, skip the string on your fourth string. You have the middle finger at the 2nd fret and then your fifth string should be up here, almost your thickest one, not yet. The fifth one, the ring finger on the 3rd fret—on the fourth string, second fret, middle. Now, whenever you go from the C chord, play it to get to your G chord. So, the three finger in G. I want you to take the ring finger and lift it up all through five string and put on your sixth string, 3rd fret. Take this middle finger off of your fourth string, lift it up and move it up here to the fifth string, 2nd fret, see that from here with these two to up here for this one and this one was here and that was up here. You lift your pointer finger off and you take this pinky and you put in here in the 3rd fret of your high E string and that’s a G chord. That’s your three finger g chord. So if you notice, this low E string, I’ve got my ring finger on the 3rd fret. The second string down which is you’re A string, it’s number five string. The middle finger is on the 2nd fret, the two middle ones are open, nothing is holding down. Your B string is your two string, nothing is holding down and your sixth string on the high E. This pinky finger is holding it down as well. So that’s the three finger G. So, if you ever play a song and you want to play a C chord and the next thing you want to move to is a G chord. You just take this finger and this finger and lift them up and move them up one string, so they were on the fourth of this string and now they’re on the fifth and sixth string and lift your pointer finger up and the pinky drops down there on the high E. so that’s the first chord progression you can practice as you practice coming from your C, to your G, back to your C, to your G, to your C, to your G. Okay and practice that chord progression there. So, that’s two more chords for you. It's a good one to practice. You are going to be going from the C to the G and from the G back to the C more times and you’ll be able to count once you start playing songs. So these are probably two of the most used chords of all time. Now, I also want to teach you real quick, the four-finger G and a chord called the C9. C9 means the C chord with the 9th at it. Don’t worry about where the ninth is or anything. That’s some theory we’ll talk about later. So for right now, I want you to make a four-finger G which I’m going to teach you . It’s a little bit different than the three-finger G. So, the three-finger G, you have your ring finger and your middle playing the six and five string in your high E, your one string at the pinky playing. We’re going to leave that pinky where it is, but instead of having these two fingers on the five and six string where I lift them up and instead we’re going to move this middle finger, it's going to play on the 3rd fret of your low E of the sixth string. So, it's going to be there. Your pointer finger is going to play you five string on the 2nd fret. These two middle, they’re still open. Your ring finger is going to play the third fret, of your B string and this little pinky is going to be on the 3rd fret on your high E, just where it was on the other G. So, the other G look like this and with these two up, move your ring down to here where it's right above your pinky on the 2nd fret and then your middle finger and pointer. So, on this string, lock your sixth string in the low E and the middle finger on the 3rd fret. The five string, the pointer finger in the 2nd fret, the middle two are open and nothings holding now and then these last two the B and the E, you have your ring and pinky on the 3rd frets. That’s a four-finger G. [Demonstration] The next chord that I’m going to teach you is the C9. For the C9, which you can substitute for any other C. So, if you see a song that says, G to C and you don’t like this whole G to C, just do the four-finger G we’ve just learned and then go to the C. All you do is, these two fingers don’t move. They’re still there on the 3rd frets of your one and two string. But, instead of this middle finger and pointer being on the sixth string, middle finger, 3rd fret of your five-string, you’re going to lift these fingers up, move them down this string and put it right back on. So, they were on the sixth string and the five-string and now they’re on five string and four-string and that’s a C9 chord. So, that’s a really cool one to practice between because you can play your G with these two here, just move these two down the string, the C9, G, C9, G,C9. Okay, you can practice between those. And really that’s four-more chords because there’s a difference between the G, the four-finger and a G Three-finger but they’re still G chords and then that C chord that we learned and the C9 sound so similar, but you can really substitute them. So, I hope that helps. It's really four more chords for you guys to practice and so far, we’ve covered A, Am, C, C9, we’ve covered the D, we’ve covered the E and the Em and we’ve covered the G chord to four ways. The four-finger G and the three-finger G. So, that’s really most of the open chords that you can play without having to get into any bar chords. So, what I want you to do is practice some of these open chords. I would suggest going back through the chords we went over before, the A, Am, C, C9, D, E and Em and G, the four-finger and the three-finger. Practice those chords so you’ll get comfortable and then move on to the next lesson. So, remember if you have any questions, send me an email to questions@freeandeasyguitar.com log in to the forum, post your questions and you’ll get some responses and I’m sure they’ll help you. So, I hope you guys are coming along and learn to play the guitar and that you’re going to have fun with it. Take care, guys!