Basic Guitar Chords
Hello, welcome back to my Beginner Guitar Lessons blog!
Today we will learn about how basic guitar chords were built. A basic guitar chord consists of three or more notes played at the same time. One of the simplest forms of basic guitar chords is the major chord so we will start from this chord.
Let us see the structure of C major scale:
A major chord will have one root note (1) and accompanied by the third (3) and the fifth (5) notes. The 1 – 1 – ½ – 1 – 1 – 1 – ½ pattern shall remain the same for other major chords, i.e. Dmaj, Emaj, etc. Please note that these chords with ‘maj’ extension are referring to the major chords and most of the time the ‘maj’ label is neglected leaving the chords as simple as C, D, etc.
OK, let’s pick your root note, third and fifth note from the example above:
(1) = C ; (3) = E and (5) = G
Now assuming that you have your guitar tuned already let us put these notes together:
The 6th string’s note is E. There is no way you can change it to C because the farthest you can go is G (the fifth note) if you press on the 3rd fret. Leave it as open E but do not pick or strum it at all. If you still want to sound that string you have to press it on the 3rd fret, making a G bass note for this C major chord.
The 5th string’s note is A. To make it C you have to press on the 3rd fret. This is your first note (C) on the bass string.
The 4th string’s note is D. Since D is not one of the 3 notes needed to form C major chord then you have to either mute it or press it to change the note. Press on the 2nd fret to change it into E. This is your third note.
The 3rd string’s note is G. Leave it as is. This is your fifth note.
The 2nd string’s note is B. It is not needed so you have to press on the first fret to make it C. This is your root note or first note.
The 1st string’s note is E. Leave it as is. This is another third note of C Major chord.
Don’t worry if you find this difficult. You don’t need to build your own chords because I will give you the guitar chords chart to study but you have to know how these chords are formed especially if you want to play lead guitar.
On the next post we will talk about another type of the basic guitar chords, the minor chords.
If you feel that you need more explanation about the chords structure you can find the information here.
To Your Guitar Success,
-TJ-
Beginner Guitar Lessons Admin
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