How To Play Guitar For Beginners - Lesson 3

Ok so you're just starting out and you're wondering how to make that guitar sound good. Well it's not as hard or as daunting of a task as you might think. Please check out some of the previous lessons if you're just starting out. They will cover things like the 1234 exercise that is perfect for getting your fingers acclimated to playing and It will show you some awesome simple guitar chords that you can start to play right away. You can find the lesson here if you want to review: http://rockstarguitarlv.com/chord-shapes-for-guitar-beginners/

So in some of our previous lessons we covered how to play E and A chords. If you recall, we went over how to play both the major and minor versions of these chords. We'll get into what major and minor actually mean later on in some music theory lessons but for now just memorizing the names will be fine. You'll notice that major chords sound brighter, warmer, and happier where as minor chords tend to sound darker, and sadder. You can review the chords with the diagrams below.

               

Often times there is some confusion as to what these diagrams mean with new students. Well just to make sure these don't look like hieroglyphs let me explain real quick. Each vertical line represents a string, the left string is the low E string and the right string is the high E string. So from left to right the strings are E A D G B E or lowest string on the left highest on the right. Now each horizontal line is a fret and these chords are played on the first and second frets of the guitar. Hopefully that helps you out for any of you that may have been lost. Here are the minor chords for quick review.

                    

Now the way I would recommend practicing these chords is in pairs. In other words, practice changing from E major to A major and get that change down. Then practice changing from E minor to A minor, and get that change down. Today we will learn a new chord and a new pair. The next chord we will learn is the C chord.

I want you to pair this chord with A minor. The reason is that the change is very simple. You'll notice that all you have to do is move your third finger from the second fret on the third string if you're playing A minor to the third fret on the fifth string. Another way to look at is that when playing between Am and C your first and second fingers stay in the same spot and only your third finger is moving. Now you have three chord pairs to practice, hope this help and I'll see you next time. ROCK ON! 

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