How To Play Guitar Chords

FREE GUITAR LESSONS

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How To Play Guitar Chords (page 2)

In this lesson you will learn:

What a chord is

How chords are formed

How to play chords

How to play chords in every key

More About Guitar Chords

Now let's play some music using the chords we have learned. Our first practice piece will be a little blues pattern using the following chords: G major, C major, and D major. For these exercises the backslash symbol '/ ' will represent one beat. Our song is comprised of "measures" each measure having 4 beats in it. Most of these chords will be played for two measures or 8 beats. We will write it like this:


   G                C                G                D
   / / / / / / / /  / / / / / / / /  / / / / / / / /  / / / / / / / /

  G                 C                 G        D        G
  / / / / / / / /   / / / / / / / /   / / / /  / / / /  / / / / / / / /

It sounds like this: Listen

Here is the same pattern in 'A'


   A                D                A                E
   / / / / / / / /  / / / / / / / /  / / / / / / / /  / / / / / / / /

  A                 D                 A        E        A
  / / / / / / / /   / / / / / / / /   / / / /  / / / /  / / / / / / / /

It sounds like this: Listen

The three chords used in both of these patterns are the chords that are majors when we build chords from the major scales; the first from the G major scale and the second from the A major scale. We use Roman numerals to identify these chords. Here's an example:

CHORDS FROM THE G MAJOR SCALE
(G - A - B - C - D - E - F# - G)

G major (first note in scale)- called the I major

A minor (2nd note in scale)-called the II minor

B minor (3rd note in scale)- called the III minor

C major (4th note in scale- called the IV major

D major (5th note in scale)- called the V major

E minor (6th note in scale)- called the VI minor

F# dim or diminished (7th note in scale)- called the VII dim

These chords are all made up of three notes from the G major scale. We cover how to determine which notes to use in the Basic Theory lessons. The important thing to remember for now is this pattern starts with the root note (the note scale is named for and started with):

I major - II minor - III minor - IV major - V major - VI minor - VII dim

From this pattern we can find the chords that naturally occur in each key as long as we know the scale. (How to find the notes in the scale is covered in the Basic Theory section of these lessons) Here's another example using the C major scale(C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C ):

CHORDS FROM THE C MAJOR SCALE

C major (C - E - G ) - I major

D minor (D - F - A ) - II minor

E minor ( E - G - B ) - III minor

F major ( F - A -C ) - IV major

G major ( G - B - D ) - V major

A minor ( A - C - E ) - VI minor

B dim ( B - D - F ) - VII Diminished

As you have no doubt noticed, our chords are formed by starting at our root note and then every other note until we have a 3 note chord. If you add the next note you've got a whole other chord, so keep it at 3 notes for now, O.K.? These chords are called "naturally occurring triads" or "diatonic chords."

If you look at the major chords they are all the 1 - 3 - 5 notes in the major scale of the root notes. The minor chords are made up of the 1 - 3b(flatted) - 5 notes in their respective major scales. For example a D major scale goes as follows D - E - F# - G - A - B - C# . This would make a D major chord the following notes : D - F# - A ; and a D minor is as follows: D - F - A. You will notice that when we write 3b we aren't playing a flatted note necessarily , but rather we are lowering the 3rd note in the scale by 1/2 step (or one fret) , what ever it happens to be. You can see the D minor chord in the chart for the chords in the C major scale.

So now you're saying to yourself: "This is all fine but how do I use this stuff?" . Well, believe it or not this basic chord scale will determine how well you write, learn, and remember how to play songs in any key. Let's say that you're jamming with some friends and one of them says "This song uses the I, IV, and V chords in 'C' ." Bam! you're ready to jam because you easily figure those chords to be C major, F major and G major. Meanwhile your other friends are just scratching their heads.

Here's another useful application. Let's look at the song "Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and later recorded by Pearl Jam. The chords in this song are G, Em (minor), C, and D. The song is in the key of 'G'. That means the chord pattern is as follows:

I major (G major) - VI minor (E minor) - IV major (C major) - V major (D major)

Now let's say that you don't want to play this song in 'G' for what ever reason, and you've decided to play it in 'C' instead. Using the chords from the C major scale instead of the G major scale we come up with the following pattern:

C , Am (minor), F and G.

How to Play the E minor chord:

E minor

How to Play the A minor chord:
Aminor

You can use this Roman numeral scale system to transpose any song to any key without having to know how to read music. And on the guitar it is very simple as you'll see in the Theory section to determine notes in particular scales or chords simply by moving numerical patterns up and down the neck. When you learn the versatile "barre" chord this really opens up a great big world of useful knowledge. And that just happens to be the next part of our lesson:
NEXT...

Guitar Chords (page 1)
Guitar Chords (page 3)
Guitar Chords (page 4)
Guitar Chord Chart

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