How to play guitar chords - Absolute beginners guitar lesson.

Before attempting this tutorial , you may need to go through the tutorial reading chords and scale maps .

You might also want to download the PDF of the first month of the GCH Guitar Academy guitar course .

This is completely free and can be downloaded from the website at WWW dot guitar hyphen academy dot com .

The first open chord will attempt is E minus seventh .

This is probably the easiest chord you can get to play E minus seventh .

Simply get the first finger and place it on the second thickest string in the second .

Fret , then strum all the strings of your guitar .

You might want to try this slowly so you can hear each individual note ring out if the notes don't ring out .

If you have any muted tones , you need them to find out why .

If it's the fingered string , then you need to press harder .

If the strings , which aren't ringing out haven't got fingers on , then it's because your finger isn't upright enough on the strings .

You might need to move the thumb around the back of the guitar to bring the finger onto its tip .

This means the finger won't overlap onto other strings and the chord should sound clean .

Attempt this a few times until you can get the cord clean .

Then take the finger off and put it back and try again .

Half the battle is getting the court in the first place , so it's a good idea to practise removing the cord , reapplying it and so on and so forth .

Once you're happy with your E minor seventh chord , we can move on to a slightly harder chord .

The E minor chord .

This cord has two fingers .

The first finger goes in the same place as it did with E Minor seventh on the second threat of the second thickest string .

The second finger goes next to it on the second threat of the third thickest string .

You can now strum the chord in the same way you did with the E Minor seventh , trying to hear each individual string ringing out and in the same way as you did with the E Minor .

Seventh .

Adjust the fingers until the cord is clean , then remove the cord completely and reapply it , checking if it's clean , do this several times until you feel you can get the cord quite quickly without dead strings .

Once you can play these two chords cleanly , you can move on to the first full chord exercise , which has AC , an a minor and a G seventh .

At this stage , when you get a new chord , it's a good idea to work through your fingers numerically .

So apply the first finger first , the second finger , the third finger and the fourth finger .

To simplify things , we'll refer to the strings as their numbers .

The first string is the thinnest string , and the sixth string is the thickest string .

So to play C , we put the first finger in the first threat of the second string .

We put the second finger in the second threat of the fourth string , and we put the third finger in the third fret of the fifth string .

When strumming the sea chord , we don't play all the strings .

We miss the thickest string and play the top five strings .

Once you're happy with your C cord , we can move on to an a minor .

The difference between AC and an A minor is only one finger , so the 1st and 2nd finger can remain in place .

We simply remove the third finger from the third fret of the fifth string and move it across to the second fret of the third string .

This process can then be reversed , and we can go between the C and the A minor and the C and the A minor until you feel comfortable with the two chords .

The final core shape in the first exercise is G seventh .

Unfortunately for G7 , you have to remove all the fingers and reapply them .

However , you can see a similarity between the G7 shape and the ceased shape to play G seventh .

Then we put the first finger in the first fret of the first string , the second finger in the second of the fifth string and the third finger in the third fret of the sixth string .

To play G7 , we strum all the strings .

Finally , you can put together the whole court exercise in the order illustrated .

When you're happy with that court exercise , you can move on to the next one