Learning guitar chords is the real meat & potatoes of learning to play the guitar. Of course there are some things you need to be able to do before you jump into learning chords but more or less it’s the most exciting part of learning guitar.
If you’re teaching yourself to play there are a few viable methods you can use to learn guitar chords. This post is going to cover a few of those methods.
1.) Books & Charts: The old fashioned way, well not really that old but feels it in terms of the digital age, was to use posters, charts and books that listed the different ways to play chords. A chord book might contain literally 15-20 different ways to play a particular chord on the guitar neck. Of course this comes in handy when you want to play along with someone playing the same chord progression but maybe an octave higher.
Having a solid guitar chord book that you carry with you in your guitar case is a good idea. Possible alternatives to a chord book now are the iphone apps you can get that allow you to search chords or other digital programs that can be used on hand held devices
2.) YouTube: Ah yes youtube, while there is a lot of junk on this website there are some diamonds in the rough. You just need to know where you’re looking. Finding a few videos that cover the basics major and minor chords on the first few frets will help you with hand positioning and correct technique.
Careful though it’s easy to get sucked into hours and hours on youtube surfing videos. The big reason I’m not a huge fan of YouTube as a viable alternative to learn to play guitar is because it’s too darn difficult to find a string of videos that teach you new things in a logical order.
3.) Video Lessons: This isn’t just a method of learning guitar chords of course. You can learn to play guitar from scratch to a great player using the right guitar lesson dvds. Products like Amazing Guitar Secrets or Learn and Master guitar cover a massive amount of material and of course learning guitar chords is included in this.
What ever method you use to learn the basic guitar chords the key to getting good at them and switching between them is practice. It’s unavoidable. So get started learning the proper positions and fingerings then practice them, practice strumming them, practice switching between them and keep doing it until it feels second nature. At that point you should be ready to put it all together to play your first song.