Chord Basics

A chord is defined as a combination of three or more notes played together. To examine this, I want to take a look at chord diagrams. Chord diagrams are used to illustrate how a chord is played. They are very easy to use because they look very much like the neck of the guitar. 

so it’s easy to make the connection between strings and fingering. There is also a picture

of the type of chord diagram that appears in most other Guitar learning guides. I want you to

be aware of that form of ‘standard’ chord diagram because you may want to use it when

writing up chords on your own paper.

So, now that you know what a chord diagram looks like and how it matches with the neck of

your guitar, it’s time to come back to what I said earlier about a chord being a combination of

three or more notes played together. Finger placing symbols are added to the chord diagram

so we know which notes to play. To start with, let’s look at your fingers.

Guitar chord basics

learn the A and D major chords and to introduce yourself to reading guitar

tablature. This first lesson is quite a big one, so I want you to really focus.

Following this, in lesson two, you’ll get into something called tablature and by lesson three

you’ll be able to play along with one of our jam tracks. Sounds hard, but it’s not. Let us start

with a tip concerning practising your guitar.

 Tunning 

Note that each string on the guitar is numbered. When you hold your guitar in the casual playing position, the 1st string is at the bottom and the 6th string is at the top.

Notice also the term ‘Tuning’ at the bottom of the above diagram. Tuning refers to the notes that the guitar strings are tuned to. In the previous diagram, I have given a very common tuning called standard E tuning that consists of the notes E, A, D, G and B. Strings 1 and 6 are both tuned to the note E. The open 6th string is called low E. The open 1st string is called high E as it is two octaves higher than the 6th string open E. I will explain notes and octaves to you later in this book, but for now, you only need to know the names of the notes in standard open E tuning.

 

Electric Guitar

The following diagram details the various parts of an electric guitar: