The Skool of guitar excellence
Welcome to 1st year at Rock Skool….let’s get to it with chords and some strumming techniques that will have you playing your first real song!
To begin, we will look at all the major chords.
These are A B C D E F G and we're back at A again, but for now we won’t bother with the B chord.
This lesson will show you how to form each of these major chords and how they should sound.
Previously we talked a bit about the names and numbers of the strings and how the fret board was also numbered. Then we looked at how the fingers of our left hand were also numbered. Now we will put that knowledge to good use.
So, in the following diagrams of chords, place each finger number on the appropriate strings as shown, the numbers will show you which finger you should use. This may take a bit of time for some of the shapes, but just hang in there.
Once you place your fingers in the spots as shown, strum across the strings near the pick-ups in a downward motion, and there it is…..your first chord, so how did it sound?
- Can you hear every string?
- Are they ringing clearly or are they are muffled mess?
Don’t despair if it sounded awful, that’s the way most everyone’s first chord sounds, with practice you will soon see improvement and sound a lot better.
You will also see a series or stack of numbers called a “TAB” for each chord shape in the following diagrams, this is how the chord is written in guitar notation.
We will cover this in more detail later so for now just note the format for each chord
RockSkool: Major Chord Theory
