How to play a D Chord

Hey! Guys its Aaron from freeandeasyguitar.com. In this lesson right here, I’m going to teach you one of the most important chords and one of my favorites and that’s the D chord. This is a chord that is really a bright sounding chord. It sounds like this— [Demonstration] It has a lot of cool things. What you can do with that just chord that are actually going to be pretty simple for a beginner, I’m going to teach it to you guys. And by the end of this lesson, you’re going to be able to play your first song that lot—millions of people around the world will recognize if you play it. So let’s get started. Okay so, the D chord, the chords are getting their name from the bass note or the root note that you play and basically what that means is that in a guitar, it means the lowest note that you’re going to play. When you play a D chord, it gets its name because you’re supposed to only play the bottom four strings. So the lowest note you play is this fourth string open. And what’s the name of that string if you remember from the standard tuning talk earlier, it’s E, A, D. This fourth string is a D string and since it’s open, that’s a D note. So that’s your D chord. Now, I’ll be honest with you, even now after two and a half years when I play and I strum a D chord, I use to strum all six strings. I try, just strum the bottom four but occasionally, I hit the five and six, the E and A string. As a beginner, don’t worry about that. Just strum all six strings. You can focus on kind of telling it down later and we’ll work on that some other lessons. But for right now, I want to show you guys how to make a D chord and we’re going to start playing your first song. So you have all your six strings here and remember. For the D chord, you’re going to take your middle finger and I want you to put on your high E which is your first string. I want you to put on your 2nd fret so we’re on this thinnest string and you’re going to go one, two, up to the 2nd fret and you’re going to put your middle finger there. Once that finger is there, I want you take your ring finger and it’s going to be right here on this next string down to two string, you’re going to put it on the 3rd fret. So it’s going to be one fret. So this middle finger is there on your 2nd fret. Your ring finger is here on your 3rd fret of your second string, and in the third string up—your pointer finger is going to go right there. So if you’re looking at it from the top, these first top three strings don’t have anything on them. This string here which is your three strings has a pointer finger on the 2nd fret pushing down. On the second string, you’re going to have your ring finger pressing down the third—what about the third fret?—right above it. And then on your finish string, your high E string, your one string, this finger here is going to be on your 2nd fret and you’re going to strum down and that is a D chord. [Demonstration] Now that you can see where my fingers are, I’m going to move back a little bit. I kind of get the whole perspective. So this is a D chord. [Demonstration] What I will do right now is I’m going to play some of these notes slowly one at a time. I want you to play with your pick and make sure it sounds the same as mine. Remember, if it doesn’t sound the same, then it’s possible that your guitar is not in tune and you want to stop right now and pause the lesson to make sure your guitar is in tune. But once you’re ready to go, what else we’re going to do? I’m going to pick the fourth string, it should sound like this. [Demonstration] I’m going to take the three strings, it sounds like this. [Demonstration] The second string should sound like this. [Demonstration] And your one string should sound like this. [Demonstration] Now if you’re going to go and that’s what it sounds like, strumming down. That’s a D chord. [Demonstration] Now some fun that you can have with this D chord is you can just pick down then you can take this middle finger off of your high E string so there’s nothing on the string. it’s just these two fingers. Pick down to the same four strings again. [Demonstration] Do you hear a different note? You can put your middle finger back on that first string there. Pick down again. Now, take your pinky and stick on this high E string, 3rd fret. This finger stays where it was. That’s just some fun you have. So I want you to speed that up. It sounds like this. [Demonstration] All right so, we’re on our D chord. I’ll play our D chord once. [Demonstration] Put that pinky finger on the high E. [Demonstration] With that pinky finger still on the high E, play it down. Take your pinky finger off so you’re back to your original D chord, strum that and then take your middle finger off. So it’s going to sound like this. [Demonstration] Now if you haven’t been able to recognize what that is yet, you can take your handy dandy little capo that I told you to get as one of your major accessories. Stick it on your 3rd fret and all you do with a capo, when you put on, you put on. Just like you’re stepping up a ladder. You squeeze your capo together, you go up one, two, there’s your 3rd fret, put it right above it, it holds down all your strings. So basically what you’ve done, you put a capo, it’s like you moved this up here the knot all the way up here. So when you make your capo, you make a nice chord in the D chord, you go to same place up. You got a two frets up from the capo. [Demonstration] Your middle finger on high E. [Demonstration] So if you can recognize that— [Demonstration] It’s Free Falling by Tom Petty. [Demonstration] So there you go, that’s your first song. If you want to start working on a strum patterns, you can just play— [Demonstration] With a D chord, in the beginning I’m playing— [Demonstration] Pinky finger goes in the high E. [Demonstration] Pinky finger off. [Demonstration] And middle finger off— [Demonstration] So that’s your first song. If you don’t have that capo, take the capo off. Play just how we did. [Demonstration] Just like that, just strum it down. That’s your first song, Free Falling by Tom Petty. Everyone is going to recognize that song and you guys are on your way to becoming a guitarist. So I hope you enjoy that. Check out for the next lesson for some more chords. If you have any questions, you can always send an email to. questions@freeandeasyguitar.com or you can better log in to the forums, create a name, post your questions on there and there’s about 3,000 people logged in right now as members who can help you and ask your questions. So good luck and as always, keep on playing and let your pick do guitaring.