Learn Guitar Chords For Free

Learn To Play Guitar Chords For Free by Ricky Sharples You will find many tips and tutorials for guitar players of all levels at Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free, a continuously updated directory of free guitar lessons, videos, chord charts and lots of useful guitar stuff. Contents Basic Guitar Theory - Guitar Scales, Chords and Arpeggios 2 3 Beginner Guitar Chords - What Are They and How Do I Play Them? Learn Guitar Chords Easily Learn How to Play Power Chords Computer Guitar Lessons 7 5 6 © Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free Basic Guitar Theory - Guitar Scales, Chords and Arpeggios If you want to play the guitar or write songs you will need to know something, at least, about guitar music theory. You could break down guitar theory down to the study of three elements: chords, scales and arpeggios. Scales come easily to some people but others find them difficult to learn and difficult to understand. You can, in fact, relate scales to chord shapes. Understanding chords and scales is a matter of exploring the relationships between the notes on the guitar fretboard, but it is not necessary to learn to read music, just find the patterns on the guitar neck. When you look at scales you will see a symbol like: # or b. The # is the sharp symbol which indicates when a note is played one fret above where it would normally be played. The b symbol is called a flat which is when the note is played a fret lower. One fret on the guitar is called a half step as opposed to a whole step or whole note. In the musical scale there is only a half step between the notes B and C and the notes E and F. The notes that don't have a sharp or flat symbol are called "naturals". The complete set of notes in the octave are, in alphabetical order, A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G#. So these notes as they are played in the C scale are C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B. The notes on the guitar begin with the open sixth string which sounds the note E, then going up the frets, F G A B C finishing the first octave on the open fourth string D. The octaves continue for twenty-one frets on most electric guitars and nineteen frets for acoustic guitars that don't have a cutaway body. Chords contain three or more notes. These notes form part of a scale that has the same name as the chord. The E major chord, for example, has three notes from the E major scale. Not all notes are created equal. The most important notes in a chord are the third and the seventh. They tell us whether the chord is major, minor or dominant. When you play chords in a particulat order it is called a progression. Most chord progressions in popular music are based on the first, fourth and fifth notes of a scale. The twelve bar blues progression is one of the most popular chord progressions. Here is a how it works out in the key of C: you are using the first note - C, the fourth, F and the fifth, G. You play four bars using the C chord, two using F, the next two bars you play C again and the next two are G and F, finishing with two bars of the C chord. The most obvious example of this progression put into practice is the instrumental piece called Guitar Boogie. 2 What Are Beginner Guitar Chords And How Do I Play Them? There are around a dozen or so guitar chords that every beginner guitar player should learn. It takes a little work right at the beginning but once you have started it will just be a matter of routine practice to get these guitar chords under your belt. There is a piece of guitar wisdom you should learn right from the start, and that is there are different arrangements of any particular song. What I am getting at is that if you hear a song on a CD and would like to learn it, the original arrangement might be beyond your capabilities as a beginner guitarist. But by using simpler versions of the song's chords, or by changing the key the song is in, it becomes more accessible to someone who does not have alot of technical skill or a large arsenal of chords. So with your collection of beginner guitar chords you will be able to play practically any song that you hear. Another tool I should mention is the capo. You probably know that this is a bar that fits tightly across the guitar neck to make the strings sound higher. Using the capo you can change your guitar to a higher key to suit the voice of the singer without learning new chords. The beginner guitar chords I will show you are all "open" chords which means one or more strings will be sounding without the need for you to press down on it with your finger. In this example, which is the A minor chord in the first position on the fretboard, the X tells us that the sixth string is not played. Where the figure 0 appears the open strings sound. As for the rest of the strings, the B string is played at the first fret, the G string is played at the third fret and the D string is played at the second fret. E 0--------------------B --1------------------G --3------------------D --2------------------A 0--------------------E X--------------------The actual work of playing these chords is quite easy after the first few days of practice, and your main focus will be learning chords for your favorite songs and practicing changing smoothly from one chord to another. Changing chords is a physical activity that needs a particular kind of attention paid to it. It is very tempting for a beginner guitar player to try to "move quickly" when learning to change chords, but the way to practice chord changing or any kind of movement associated with guitar playing is to do it slowly. If you have seen guitarists fluff chord changes while they are playing it is because they have rushed when they were doing their practice. This is a quick guide to guitar chords for beginners assuming that you want to start playing the guitar by learning songs you have heard on the radio or on CDs. If you learn in this way you will be getting your basic chords quite quickly without learning much about the theoretical framework. You can take another approach and learn your guitar chords according to the "families" they are in. A chord family is a set of chords that are related to each other because they sound good together. As an example, if you are learning a song where the chord at the end of the song is an A, you will be using the A family of chords which consists of the A, D and E chords. You can find out more about chord families from your teacher or by doing an internet search. Do you want to learn to play the guitar? http://playaguitarforfree.com/ is my blog which shows you that there are many people like you who wish to learn how to play bass, acoustic or electric guitar. It is the ultimate resource if you are looking for the best way to learn how to play the guitar. There are some common elements of guitar playing that I cover such as learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, how to learn guitar scales, how to play guitar fast. As a learner guitarist you will find guitar lessons, videos, articles and reviews to answer your questions, calm your fears and help you play the guitar the way you want to play it. I have the resources you need to learn how to play the guitar for free. 4 Learn Guitar Chords Easily If you have a burning desire to learn to play guitar chords then stick around. It does not matter whether you want to play lead guitar in a band or just accompany your singing on the acoustic guitar, the principles of learning guitar chords are the same. I will talk about the easiest kinds of chords to play and how guitarists learn thousands of songs with very little effort. After reading my little essay you will have the basic understanding of guitar chords that will give you direction in your quest to become a guitarist. If you have watched advanced guitar players at concerts or on TV you might have been discouraged by how complicated guitar chords appear to be. It is true that some guitar songs or instrumentals do call for chord shapes and changes that require alot of practice but you can easily become an accomplished electric or acoustic guitarist without being a virtuoso. It is quite possible to stay with easy guitar chords for your whole career. The first thing you need to do is find a list of songs that you want to learn to play. The first criterion for choosing songs is whether you like them. The others have to do with the use of open chords and chord families which we will now take a look at. Apart from your personal enjoyment, the use of songs as tools for learning chords has a practical value: it is much easier to learn groups of chords rather than one at a time because changing from one chord to the other helps your muscle memory to learn the fingerings. Another thing that simplifies the process of learning guitar chords is the fact that popular music relies heavily on a form that uses only three chords for any song. This is not a hard and fast rule but you will find it holds true for most popular songs. An effective way to classify chords is to separate them into families which are simply combinations of chords that sound well together. In the key of A you have A, D and E. In the key of D the chords are D, E minor, G and A. In the key of G they are G, A minor, C, D, and E minor. And the family of chords for the key of C is C, D minor, E minor, F and G. To make your guitar practice time most effective begin with learning one chord family at a time and finding "three chord" songs that contain your chords. The key to beginning as a guitarist is to learn what are called "open" chords. These are chords that only require you to use two or three fingers to make the chord shapes. Open chords are played in the first position on the guitar fretboard, that is, within the first three frets. An example of an open chord is the E minor chord: E--------0--------------B--------0--------------G--------0--------------D--------2--------------A--------2--------------E--------0---------------The E minor chord requires you to place two fingers at the second fret on the fifth and fourth strings. What could be easier? If you want to become an electric guitar player, you might be interested to know that power chords are the simplest to play. Power chords usually only need two fingers and are combined with the use of distortion to fry the brains of rock music lovers of all ages. So you have something to look forward to. 5 Learn How to Play Power Chords In the beginning the electric guitar was just an instrument used to give the guitar player in a band the chance to be heard. Then along came fifties guitar player, Link Wray who pioneered the use of overdriven sound and distortion. He also introduced rock and roll guitar players to the power chord. Thanks to Link Wray guitar players are now enabled to kick butt. Power chords make your guitar playing interesting. And the really great thing about power chords for beginner guitar players is that they only use two or three strings. You can move them around the fretboard at high speed and you can make use of them to back major or minor keys. A power chord is a chord containing your root note and the fifth above it. To demonstrate the basic structure of power chords put your first finger on the third fret of the sixth string and your middle finger on the fifth string at the fifth fret. So with this example your root note is G and the fifth is, of course, D. If you want to add more texture you can add the third to the chord plus, or instead of, the octave above your root note. Once you get the hang of power chords you can add and take away the fifths, thirds and octaves according to your whim. Practicing power chords can give you some less tiring practice on bar chords but don't decide to go ahead and play ONLY power chords. That would be silly. You need to be constantly on the lookout for ways to vary your playing to make your audience sit up and take notice. Playing nothing but power chords would get boring after a while - for you and your audience. If you want to get the feel of power chords, get hold of a copy of "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks. This was the very first song that was actually composed around power chords and if it wasn't for this song there might not have been heavy metal guitar playing. There are charts showing power chords that you can download for free on the net but it is best to just keep in mind "root, fifth, octave" and do your own discovery of how to play power chords. An interesting variation on playing power chords is the use of chords that consist of two strings played at the same fret. You can try this by barring the first two strings and sliding it up and down the fretboard or making your bar and using the third finger of your left hand to play a tune while the second string provides the harmony or discord, depending on your point of view. 6 Computer Guitar Lessons Maybe you have thought about computer guitar lessons. If you could order your own tailor-made guitar lesson course for your computer, what would you request? It might help to think about the basic requirements of computer guitar lessons. Basically your lessons need to show you how to hold and play the guitar, how to read guitar tabs, sheet music or both, and some way of checking your progress. So let us look at some of the computer guitar lessons out there and see how they fulfill our requirements. Learn And Master Guitar has a one-hundred page book, twenty DVDs, five CDs featuring backing tracks plus they offer free support. The structure of this course follows the basic principles of all computer guitar lessons: you have your learning material that you get from the book and from the DVDs, and you practice what you have learned using the backing tracks as a guide and reality check on your emerging guitar skills. Another computer guitar course is called Amazing Guitar Secrets. Once again you have a book and DVDs containing your guitar lessons and backing tracks to play along with. You can track how you are progressing using a section of the book which allows you to have a visual record of what you have learnt. If you have been looking around for computer guitar lessons you have probably come across Jamorama. Jamorama is for the guy who does not take music particularly seriously but thinks it might be cool to be able to play some songs and riffs on the guitar. Not that there's anything wrong with that. To be fair, Jamorama does give you plenty of substantial material in the books, audio and video which you download to make you a "real" guitar player should you so desire. The three guitar lesson courses I have mentioned are meant to be shipped to you in printed form and on discs or downloaded and kept on your computer. There is another alternative: the membership site. The most comprehensive and so far the most successful is Jamplay. With Jamplay you get access to a number of guitar teachers who are experts in their own style of music. These teachers are videoed giving lessons illustrating techniques and how to play particular songs. The lessons cover all stages of guitar learning. So with Amazing Guitar Secrets, Jamorama and Learn And Master Guitar you get to keep all the guitar lessons at your house, your Jamplay membership gets you access to any improvements, revisions and updates that occur. Jamplay also has progress reports, a forum and support through video answers to your questions. Jamplay is probably the most economical option as you can pay by the month, and your fees drop drastically if you pay by the quarter or annually. I should mention that none of the above computer guitar lesson courses lack for quality. The printed material, downloadable audio and video, CDs and DVDs are all first class. The difference between the methods is the varying approaches to the guitar. 7