I hope you enjoyed learning to play Love Me Do by the Beatles! Now you’re going to learn a few more beginner guitar chords (as well as a couple of advanced techniques!) before moving on to our next beginner guitar song.
If you need to, you can remind yourself of how to read guitar chord charts or of the first few beginner guitar chords we showed you. Or you can check out some of our other chord guides, including ones for G major and B major.
Let’s get straight into it!
E Minor
E minor, often notated as Em, only requires two fingers to play. This is probably the easiest chord for beginners to learn.
Place your 2nd finger in the 2nd fret, 5th string, and your 3rd finger in the 2nd fret, 4th string while strumming all the strings.
E Major
E major is essentially the same as E minor, but you add the first fret on the third string using your first finger. It is easy to play and has a warm, happy sound.
A Major
This is a very comfortable chord with no finger stretching.
Your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd fingers are in the second fret on the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd strings, respectively. Then, strum all strings except low E.
D Minor
D Minor can be quite challenging for beginners to play. There is no stretching, but you have to put your fingers on three different frets in three different places.
When forming a D minor, start by placing your first finger on the first fret of the first string, then place your finger on the second string and third string respectively. Placing your fingers in this order will make it easier to form the chord.
F Major
F major is one of the hardest beginner guitar chords. Similar to D minor, it involves putting your fingers on three different frets on three different strings. But it also has a small barre across the first fret on strings one and two. This makes it even harder.
A barre is when you hold down more than one string with the flat of your finger. Holding down strings this way is harder than it is with the tips of your fingers. Because of this, it might take a bit of practice to get this chord right.
You might find that the E string is muted or buzzes. If it does, spend some time practicing the barre on its own to get your finger used to holding down the strings in this way.
Beginner guitar chords advanced techniques
Now you have learned most of the basic chords, it’s time to introduce you to some more advanced techniques: barre chords and power chords.
Barre Chords
A barre chord is when you place your pointer finger across several strings. This effectively mimics the nut at the bottom of the neck, allowing you to play chord shapes across the entire fretboard.
To start, finger an open E Major chord, that’s E-B-E-G#-B-E. Don’t use your pointer finger, though. Keep that shape, but slide your fingers up in one position. Now you’ll have E-C-F-A-B-E.
To transform this into an F Major, use your pointer finger to hold down all the strings in the first position. Concentrate most on all the open or unfingered strings. Now you’re playing F-C-F-A-C-F, a perfect F-Major.
This will be really hard to begin with and takes a lot of practice. But now you can slide that same shape to any fret and find a new chord. Slide up two positions, and you have a G chord. Or, slide up 12 positions, and you have a higher-pitched F chord.
Once you have this technique down, you can quickly and easily play a huge range of basic chords across the guitar neck. (Insert picture of different 6th position chords up the neck)
Power Chords
Once you’ve learned the basic shape, power chords unlock a whole world of simple, easy-to-play chords that you can quickly switch between.
Instead of trying to get all the notes of a major chord, you’ll only finger a root note, and a fifth note. So for a C5 or C power chord, that would mean playing a C note and a G note. (Insert picture of C5)
Play another song!
You now know how to play all beginner guitar chords and you’ve learned a couple of more advanced techniques.
In our next lesson, you’ll learn how to play another beginner song on guitar. This time, it’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door by Bob Dylan. Don’t worry, you won’t have to use power chords or barre chords!