- Learning Acoustic Guitar chords - Tom Gally
Learning how to play the guitar can seem overwhelming for the beginner, so the guitar teacher must take care to begin the guitar lesson with some simple chords that students may practice at their leisure in order to ensure success in their learning.
Guitar Chord Lessons
The acoustic guitar lesson may begin with a recap on correct fretting techniques, to remind students how to change chords smoothly.
In order to learn guitar chords, the guitar teacher may progress with a demonstration on how to play four important chords: E minor, A minor, G major and D major. These chords are quite simple, but require practice to move smoothly from one chord to another. Confidence may build when students remember the formation of the fingers at the fretboard, as opposed to individual finger positioning. Chords may sound off key if the guitar is not tuned correctly. For this reason, students must keep their guitars perfect pitched when practicing chords.
Further support may be offered in the form of fretboxes, which are diagrams of the upper part of a fretboard and markers for fingers. These can be found in the illustrations at the foot of this article. The teacher may explain that the fretboxes show the bass strings to the left of the diagram, and the thin strings to the right. (This must be reversed for left handed guitarists.) The black dots represent the positioning of the fingers over the strings.
Fretboxes for Guitar Chords
At this point, students may be reminded of string notes, which are from and including the bass string: low E, A, D, G, B and high E. With this in mind, the following chords can be achieved by the following finger positions on the fretboard.
G Major (fig 1)
- Place the index finger on the A string between the first and second fret
- Place the second finger onto the bass string between the second and third fret
- Place the third finger on the highest string between the second and third fret
E Minor (fig 2)
- Place the second and third finger onto the A and D string between the first and second fret.
A Minor (fig 3)
- Place the index finger on the B string below the first fret
- Place the second finger on the G string between the first and second fret
- Place the third finger on the D string between the first and second fret
D Major (fig 4)
- Place the index finger onto the G string between the first and second fret
- Place the second finger on the highest string between the first and second fret
- Place the third finger on the B string between the second and third fret
Acoustic Guitar Chords
There will be an inevitable hesitation between chord changes, but this will be expected. The guitar teacher may encourage the students to strum four times per chord before changing the chords in the following order:
- G major
- E minor
- A minor
- D major
Retaining a rhythm throughout, even if this is slow at first, is more desirable than strumming quickly and then hesitating between chord changes. To help with smooth changes, students may be encouraged to look for a finger that does not change position much during the change, and to bear this finger in mind when the other fingers move. Practice is the key.
How to Learn Guitar Chords
The guitarist’s first chords should be ones that are most simple in order to encourage success in learning and motivate the student to continue guitar lessons. The four chords E minor, G, A minor and D, are most simple and give pleasing sounds, particularly when played in the order advised. Confidence from learning these important chords can then be used to build onto more challenging exercises in guitar practice.
Rachel Shirley - I have written and illustrated several art instruction books entitled Oil Paintings from your Garden and Oil Paintings from the Landscape ...
