Playing a guitar involves knowing chords, reading chord charts, music theory, scales, notes and so on. It can all seem quite confusing in the beginning, but it becomes enjoyable when you have a good foundation of the basics and you actually start making music.
The main challenge is to become proficient at the basic guitar chords. This is simply because these form the basis of most music, forming the harmonic instrumental complement. If you listen to your favorite rock artists, you will see that some of the most memorable riffs are from rhythm guitar sounds based on basic chords. Which means that by knowing ten to fifteen basic guitar chords you’ll know to play hundreds of songs.
So What Exactly Is A Chord?
The simple definition is – three or more different musical notes played together form a chord, for example, when you pluck or strum at least three strings on your guitar at the same time to produce three, or more than three notes. On a six-string guitar, you can play a maximum of six notes at a time. Chords can be Major, Minor or Seventh, based on their musical structure. Each sounds distinctive. While major chords sound steady and complete, minor chords sound thoughtful and more sober. Seventh chords are mostly used in jazz and need to be supplemented with more notes.
What Are The Basic Guitar Chords?
Basic guitar chords are played as open chords. There are major and minor chords from four musical keys namely A, G, C and D. When we say open chords, we mean that you don’t hold down the chord at the fret. Obviously it is easier to learn basic open chords than advanced ones like Barre chords. Basic major and minor chords are A major or A, A minor or Am, C, D, Dm, E, Em, F and G. You can learn these by key and play several songs by combining them. You can learn them by splitting them into families and referring to them; for example, Family A – A, D, E on the A key. Family D – D, Em, G, A on the D key and so on for G and C family.
There’s always a controversy about a ‘standard’ list of basic chords. But there’s a concurrence over the fact that there are about eight to eighteen basic chords on the open string that you must master, simply because they are applicable to any musical style you choose to play with, whether jazz, rock, pop or classical. These form the basic skills that will carry you through for as long as you decide to play the guitar.
You must develop the skill to recognize the notes on a particular chord. For this, you can use guitar chord charts that are quite easy to learn to read. From these, you can figure out the exact finger placement for a specific chord that you intend to play.