This section will introduce some of the major chords and will teach a few simple songs. As mentioned previously, it is very important to keep the practicing of a musical instrument interesting and fun. The way this section should be approached is as follows: learn some of the basic chords and then either create a song from these or try and find a song that uses only a few of these simple chords (this will be much easier than you would imagine, as many popular songs are quite simple musically). A great place to start looking for music is the Ultimate Band List Go to the main site and then click on the letter of the artist to search for (or enter a search text in the search box -- this way is usually much slower) Once an artists "page" has been found look for links to places that advertise "sheet music" or "guitar tabulature." You'll be surprised how much is out there.

A musical chord is just a group of notes that is played at the same time. The intervals between these notes and how the frequencies of these notes react with each other determine what the chord will sound like. Chords are named by the notes in them and the relationships that these notes have to each other. For, instance, a simple G major chord consists of the notes G, B, and D. A major chord consists of a root note, a third, and a fifth. In the previous example, the G would be the root note, the B would be the third and the D would be the fifth. All this means is that the note B is four half steps above the G, and the note D is seven half steps above the G A common chord is a major chord. A major chord is composed of a root, a third, and a fifth

The notation for the chord presentation must now be explained. The following notation:

means "fret the high and low E strings (the top and bottom strings) on the third fret and fret the A string (second from the top in this picture) on the second fret." (incidently, this is a G major chord)

A black circle on a string means "fret this string on the fret shown", a white circle means "play this string without fretting it anywhere." An X on a string means "mute (don't sound) this string." To mute a string, a player can either not play the string at all, or lightly touch the string, in order to keep the string from ringing. I have included numbers next to the black dots. These numbers correspond to the finger that should be used to play the chord. 1 means index finger, 2 means middle finger, 3 means ring finger, and 4 means pinky finger. So in the above example the pinky finger should be used to fret the high E string on the third fret, the ring finger should be used to fret the low E string on the third fret and the middle finger should be used to fret the A string on the second fret.

2.2 Chord Diagrams

the G major chord:
Shown above

the A major chord


the E major chord


the D major chord

On to Section 3