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Beginner Guitar Lessons-Your First Guitar Chords

Beginner Guitar Lessons-Your First Guitar Chords

Throughout this lesson, I’ll give you tips for your fretting hand to help keep your chords sounding clean and free from buzzing noise. I’ll also give you some extra tips that are more subjective, but can still apply to almost everyone.
How To Read A Chord Diagram


Before we start playing any chords, you need to know how to read a chord diagram. If you look at a chord diagram, you’ll see six vertical lines that represent the strings on the guitar. The line on the very left represents the low E string, and the line on the far right represents the high E string.

The horizontal lines on the chord diagram represent the frets, and the chord diagrams in this lesson have a rectangle at the top of the diagram. That rectangle, or box, represents the nut of the guitar so you can keep track of where you are.

The dots on the chord diagram tell you where to put your fingers. If a dot is colored in, it represents the root note of the chord you’re playing. If the dot has a number inside of it, it’s telling you which finger to use when you make that chord shape.

For example, with the A minor 7 chord, you can see on the chord diagram a circle with a ‘1’ in it on the first fret of the B string. This means you need to use your first finger to play the first fret on the B string.

Another part of chord diagrams to understand is if ‘X’ appears above the nut at all. If you see an ‘X’ above a string, that means that you won’t play that string at all. For A minor 7, you’ll leave the E string out when you strum.

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