Cramming more than one or two fingers at a time onto the fretboard is usually just too hard for most students for the first few months. What if some cool-sounding chords are actually easier to play than the most commonly taught “beginner” chords?
Many beginning guitar students show up to their first lesson with a well-intentioned instructor and are immediately handed a sheet of chord diagrams featuring the CAGED chords as well as Amin, Dmin, and Emin. The teacher may also throw in F for good measure. They may even try to show the student a root position E shape barre chord. The problem with this approach is that, while these are essential chord forms for rock and pop guitar as well as being very useful for understanding the layout of the fingerboard, they are often much too physically taxing for soft un-calloused fingertips and weak hands.
If you are open to the idea of playing some chords that exploit open strings and jump around the neck a little bit, we can explore some colorful options that will get you playing without too much (if any) finger pain or discomfort. (It’s extremely important that you get your guitar set up by a professional to lower the action and make it as playable as possible. Most students usually have a guitar that came straight from the store. Many are fine guitars but need that extra bit of care to make them playable. Don’t cheap out on this!).
Note Movable Chords
The following is a series of chords that actually sound pretty good together and make use of only one or two fingers at a time. Several also have enough space between fingers that you won’t feel at all jammed up. Care does need to be taken to sound only the strings indicated. Don’t just start strumming all six strings and expect the magic to happen.
From this group of chords, first, try them in the order presented. See if you can get the sequence flowing smoothly from chord to chord from the beginning of the list to the end then start the sequence again. Once that starts to get easier, perhaps start experimenting with smaller sub-sets and pairs. For instance, playing Amaj9 to Dmaj9 and then Amin9 to Dmin9 has a nice modal shift. Notice that this chord sequence starts on Amajor9. It then cycles up in fourths symmetrically until it gets to Cmajor7 at which point there are 4 chords diatonic (of the key) to C major. The D 6-9/F# breaks out of the key momentarily and then returns to the key of C with Fmaj13. (A really colorful IV chord.) These first chords all stay well within the lower half of the guitar fingerboard. It’s important not to get so fixated on learning the chords in the first position that the rest of the guitar gets neglected and you develop an irrational fear of the higher positions!
Bonus! Here is a simple I-vi-ii-V in Cmajor. It uses only 1 and 2 finger chords. This sequence is a very common chord progression in many styles of music. These specific colours in this particular example are fairly “jazzy” but if you were to use simple first position versions of these chords without fancy 7ths, etc (remember those difficult but simple chords your guitar teacher keeps trying to show you?) like C -Amin – Dmin – G it will give this a more pop or folky character. (How you play the chords will also dictate the style, of course.) These chords stay in the comfort of the first or “open” position.
My First 2 Chords
Double Bonus! This sequence outlines a ii-V7-I-VI7 progression in C major using only 1 and 2-finger chords. This is a common jazz chord progression that takes on a slightly impressionistic quality through the use of open strings and seconds. This sequence leaps up to the area around the 10th fret for the first pass of the progression then drops back down to the lower part of the neck for the second pass. Hopefully, this shows the beauty of learning more than one way to play a particular chord and exploring the fingerboard.
Triple bonus! Here is a I-vi-ii-V7 progression in D major using only 2 finger chords. This is functionally the same progression as the first bonus progression but in the key of D major instead of C major.
Play all of these sequences strummed with a pick or your thumb at first to hear the sounds and keep it simple. You can then try breaking up the chords with the plectrum or even fingers if fingerpicking is something you might want to explore. Follow the chord diagrams and make sure to omit any notes that have an X next to them. (Really important!) This is by no means an exhaustive or even remotely complete chord reference. It is just a selection of chords that are particularly nice sounding on their own or even mixed and matched. Try them on for size and see which ones sound good to you.
What Is The Right Way To Play A Major Chord On Guitar?
Marc-Andre Seguin is the webmaster, “brains behind” and teacher on JazzGuitarLessons.net, an online resource for learning how to play jazz guitar. He draws from his experience both as a professional jazz guitarist and professional jazz teacher to help thousands of people from all around the world learn the craft of jazz guitar.
Thomas Duflos has been teaching guitar and bass for over 10 years. He is now in charge of communication and marketing at Arobas Music. Sharing his passion for guitar and music is one of his main interests. In his free time, Thomas is also a composer and drummer of the band The Foxy Raccoons.Remove the third from your chords and you get the appropriately named powerchord, a staple of rock, punk and pop music. Here’s how to beef up your playing using only two notes.
Previous Chord Clinics have tended to concentrate on adding notes to chords (such as sevenths, ninths and elevenths) or altering the notes in a chord (such as sus2 or sus4). This month, we are going to take a look at what happens when you take a note away from the basic three-note triad.
Suspended Guitar Chords
There is only one candidate for removal – the third. If you remove the fifth, you’re left with a root and a third, which doesn’t sound all that different from the full triad. If you remove the root, you’re still left with what sounds like a chord, except the third now sounds like the root. Take away the third, however, and you are left with a bare fifth, which can sound more effective than major and minor chords, particularly when you have the amp cranked and there’s some distortion.
Distortion causes each note you play to generate prominent overtones – that’s why it sounds so fat. If you keep the third in the chord, the overtones from all three notes can end up as a pile of mush, in conflict with each other. So things sound clearer but heavier if you leave out the third. Chords that contain just the root and the fifth are known as 5 chords, fifth chords, 5th chords or powerchords; it’s probably best to call them five chords. Technically, they are diads (two notes) not triads (three notes), and some people argue that they are an interval (perfect fifth) and not really chords at all because they don’t have that root-third-fifth structure. But it seems to me that in rock music they function in the same way as chords – and that’s what we’ll call them here.
Take a look at figure 1, which introduces A5, D5 and E5. Hold on, you might be thinking, these are three-note chords. Well, the fattest five chords happen when you double the root note an octave up, giving you the root, perfect fifth and octave. One thing with most five-chord shapes is that you will need to do some damping to avoid sounding all those unwanted open strings. Wrapping the thumb over to touch the bass strings is useful for A5 and D5; it also helps if you don’t go too wild with the pick, aiming to pick just the three notes of each chord.
How Do I Play Power Chords? Beginner Guitar Lesson
These chords sound good in the order here, but you could also try E5, D5 then A5, and if you get the rhythm right it might sound similar to AC/CD’s Back In Black. Add a descending blues scale riff to take it further.
In figure 2, the three-note G5 chord includes a muted A string. Try starting on A5 for some Van Halen-style rhythm parts. The second chord shows that you can also stack up the roots and fifths to produce a five-note G5 chord. For the sake of completeness, we’ve included a stacked-up C5 as well, although G5 also sounds good followed by Cadd9, keeping the same top two notes. You could also experiment with G5, followed by D and Dsus4, wiggling your little finger on and off as you strum. Then play some slash chords (see last month’s lesson): C, C/B, C/A and round again. Ziggy, as Mr Bowie pointed out,
Marc-Andre Seguin is the webmaster, “brains behind” and teacher on JazzGuitarLessons.net, an online resource for learning how to play jazz guitar. He draws from his experience both as a professional jazz guitarist and professional jazz teacher to help thousands of people from all around the world learn the craft of jazz guitar.
Thomas Duflos has been teaching guitar and bass for over 10 years. He is now in charge of communication and marketing at Arobas Music. Sharing his passion for guitar and music is one of his main interests. In his free time, Thomas is also a composer and drummer of the band The Foxy Raccoons.Remove the third from your chords and you get the appropriately named powerchord, a staple of rock, punk and pop music. Here’s how to beef up your playing using only two notes.
Previous Chord Clinics have tended to concentrate on adding notes to chords (such as sevenths, ninths and elevenths) or altering the notes in a chord (such as sus2 or sus4). This month, we are going to take a look at what happens when you take a note away from the basic three-note triad.
Suspended Guitar Chords
There is only one candidate for removal – the third. If you remove the fifth, you’re left with a root and a third, which doesn’t sound all that different from the full triad. If you remove the root, you’re still left with what sounds like a chord, except the third now sounds like the root. Take away the third, however, and you are left with a bare fifth, which can sound more effective than major and minor chords, particularly when you have the amp cranked and there’s some distortion.
Distortion causes each note you play to generate prominent overtones – that’s why it sounds so fat. If you keep the third in the chord, the overtones from all three notes can end up as a pile of mush, in conflict with each other. So things sound clearer but heavier if you leave out the third. Chords that contain just the root and the fifth are known as 5 chords, fifth chords, 5th chords or powerchords; it’s probably best to call them five chords. Technically, they are diads (two notes) not triads (three notes), and some people argue that they are an interval (perfect fifth) and not really chords at all because they don’t have that root-third-fifth structure. But it seems to me that in rock music they function in the same way as chords – and that’s what we’ll call them here.
Take a look at figure 1, which introduces A5, D5 and E5. Hold on, you might be thinking, these are three-note chords. Well, the fattest five chords happen when you double the root note an octave up, giving you the root, perfect fifth and octave. One thing with most five-chord shapes is that you will need to do some damping to avoid sounding all those unwanted open strings. Wrapping the thumb over to touch the bass strings is useful for A5 and D5; it also helps if you don’t go too wild with the pick, aiming to pick just the three notes of each chord.
How Do I Play Power Chords? Beginner Guitar Lesson
These chords sound good in the order here, but you could also try E5, D5 then A5, and if you get the rhythm right it might sound similar to AC/CD’s Back In Black. Add a descending blues scale riff to take it further.
In figure 2, the three-note G5 chord includes a muted A string. Try starting on A5 for some Van Halen-style rhythm parts. The second chord shows that you can also stack up the roots and fifths to produce a five-note G5 chord. For the sake of completeness, we’ve included a stacked-up C5 as well, although G5 also sounds good followed by Cadd9, keeping the same top two notes. You could also experiment with G5, followed by D and Dsus4, wiggling your little finger on and off as you strum. Then play some slash chords (see last month’s lesson): C, C/B, C/A and round again. Ziggy, as Mr Bowie pointed out,
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