7 Fun & Easy Guitar Chord Progressions For Beginners

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A chord progression is basically a series of chords played one after another in a particular order.

But before you learn how to play the following 7 chord progressions, you must know how to play the chords.

Here are the chords you will need to know in order to play these chord progressions:

A, A Minor, C, D, D Minor, E, E Minor, G

I have included videos below which demonstrate how to play these chords:

The A & E Chords:

The D Chord:

The A Minor, E Minor, D Minor, C, G

Watch the videos above and practice those chords first. Then start practicing the chord progressions below.

For the chord progressions, strum each chord 4 times with a down up down up strumming pattern. Go very slow in the beginning so that you will be able to change chords smoothly and accurately.

You can test and see if you are playing each chord accurately by playing one string at a time on the chord. If you hear any buzzing , or if any of the notes sound muted, you are either not pressing down hard enough, or one of your fingers or your hand is touching another string.

Here are the Chord Progressions:

G - C - D - G

G - Am - D - G

D - G - A - D

D - C - G - D

D - E Minor - A - D

C - Dm - G - C

E - D - A - E

I know this all seems very difficult in the beginning, and it may seem that way for some time.  The most important thing to remember is to never give up.

Eventually your hands will become stronger, your chords will sound cleaner and your chord changes will become faster.

Enjoy and Happy Guitar Playing!

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How To Play Chords On Your Guitar

By Kevin Sinclair

As a beginner you will already be making your own music on your instrument but learning how to play chords by strumming or striking two or three strings of the guitar at the same time takes your playing one step further and learning how to do this can be very rewarding.

The three most frequently used chords are G major, C Major and D major. These are also the easiest chords for placement of your fingers so an ideal place for the beginner to start learning and practicing to play chords. When these easy chords are mastered the more challenging chords can then be studied.

To play a chord in G major you need to place your second finger on the sixth string of the third fret. Then place your first finger on the fifth string of the second fret. Your third finger is then placed on the third fret of the first string. It is important to curl your fingers so they are not touching any other strings as this will change the sound of the chord. Then with your fingers in place when you strike all the six strings in one continuous strum the sound of the G major chord will be heard.

To play the C major key, you need place your third finger on the third fret of the fifth string. Then, your second finger should be placed on the second fret of the fourth string and finally your first finger on the first fret of the second string. When playing the C major chord only the bottom five strings should be strummed so make sure you avoid hitting the sixth string as this will also change the sound of the chord.

The D major key involves all three fingers being placed in close proximity so this may be a little difficult for some beginners although once the technique is mastered it will no longer be a problem. Put your first finger on the third string of the fourth fret. Then your third finger on the second string of the third fret. Lastly, put the second finger on the first string of the second fret. You will then play the D major chord by strumming the four bottom strings.

There are many songs to choose from which have only these three chords and then once you are fully familiar and confident you can move on to songs involving different chords. There is only one way to play chords to perfection and that is to practice on a regular basis.

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of MusicianHome.com, a site that provides information and articles for musicians at all stages of their development. http://www.musicianhome.com

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Guitar Lesson: Learn Open Chords - By Peter Edvinsson

It is really exciting to play guitar! You can experiment with chords in a completely different way than on the piano. The construction of the guitar and the tuning of the strings allow you to find these easy sounding chords!

You will first learn a very easy form of tablature with only numbers. Tablature staffs written the ordinary way can easily be displayed in a distorted way in articles like this one.

To show how to read the tab notation I give you this note to play on your guitar:

3/2

The first number tells you to play the third fret. The number after the slash indicates which string to play. This means that you are to play the third fret on the second string. That will be the note D on an commonly tuned guitar.

Open chords are used in many types of guitar tunes. First you have to know what an open chord is. It usually refers to the most common chords played in the first position with some open strings, that is, strings that are not pressed down.

You will start with an ordinary C-chord. It looks like this:

C: 3/5 2/4 0/3 1/2 0/1

Now you are going to try the nice sounding but easy Fmaj7 chord by changing two fingers. Here it is:

Fmaj7: 3/4 2/3 1/2 0/1

these two chords can be played together as an intro to your new song for example.

You can play them like this:

C / / / Fmaj7 / / / C / / / Fmaj7 / / /

We will now take a look at a chord you will find by sliding the Fmaj7 chord up two frets. You will get the chord G6:

G6: 5/4 4/3 3/2 0/1

We can now play the following chord progression:

C / / / Fmaj7 / / / G6 / / / Fmaj7 / / / C

You will now test a chord progression starting with the common open A-minor chord that can be used together with the previous progression. Here is the A-minor chord:

Am: 0/5 2/4 2/3 1/2 0/1

By sliding this chord up two frets you will get a nice sounding chord that can be called Bm7add11:

Bm7add11: 0/5 4/4 4/3 3/2 0/1

The last chord in this progression is an open A-minor 7th chord in the fifth position:

Am7: 0/5 5/4 5/3 5/2 0/1

The guitar chord progression with the previous chord shapes will look as follows:

Am / / / Bm7add11 / / / Am7 / / / Bm7add11 / / /

We will now play a little chord progression with the previous Am7 chord. We will need two more chords to complete this progression. Here is the open Am6 shape:

Am6: 0/5 4/4 5/3 5/2 0/1

We will now alter the fret on the fourth string again and we will get the Fmaj7/A chord.

Fmaj7/A: 0/5 3/4 5/3 5/2 0/1

Here you have a guitar chord progression with the last chords we learned:

Am7 / / / Am6 / / / Fmaj7/A / / / Am6 / / /

Let’s take a look at the open E-major chord:

0/6 2/5 2/4 1/3 0/2 0/1

By sliding this chord up three frets you will get the following interesting guitar chord:

0/6 5/5 5/4 4/3 0/2 0/1

It is a form of the E-minor 7th chord.

If you continue to slide this chord up you will get an A-major add 9 chord:

Aadd9: 0/6 7/5 7/4 6/3 0/2 0/1

If you move the chord up two more frets you will get a B sounding chord that can be called Bsus/E:

0/6 9/5 9/4 8/3 0/2 0/1

These three chords can replace the more common E, A and B chords in a progression.

Starting with the open E-major chord you will now learn a flamenco guitar sounding progression

First, the E-major chord:

0/6 2/5 2/4 1/3 0/2 0/1

Now, slide this chord up one fret and you will find the three open strings sounding the same but blended with a F-major chord on the strings that are pressed down. An interesting morish sounding chord. Here it is written with tabs:

0/6 3/5 3/4 2/3 0/2 0/1

The next chord to use in this flamenco progression is the E-minor 7 chord you will get by sliding the chord two frets further up the fretboard:

0/6 5/6 5/5 4/3 0/2 0/1

You can do many things with the basic open guitar chords by sliding them to other frets and slightly change them. These were just a few examples to start your investigation!

Peter Edvinsson invites you to download your free piano sheet music, guitar tabs, ebooks, music lessons and read his guitar lesson blog at http://www.capotastomusic.com

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The G Chord on the Guitar - Relearning It

The G Chord on the Guitar - Relearning It
By Lee Griffith

In the mid 1970’s, after I had played guitar for about ten years, I took a few lessons from Mick Martin, an incredibly fast and versatile flatpicker.
It was these lessons that put me on the right path toward getting those fiddle
tunes to sound crisp and lively on the acoustic guitar.

I was told I had to “unlearn” a number of habits in order to get going in the right direction. The first thing he told me I had to do was to change the way I played the most basic of all chords: the
G chord!

I had spent ten years playing G the way many people play it. You know, your second finger is behind the third fret of the sixth (low E) string, your first finger is behind the second fret of the fifth (A) string, and your third finger is behind the third fret of the first (high E) string. What could be easier?

But being easy wasn’t the point. I had to learn something that was going to be very hard at first, in order to make a lot of other things much easier down the road. Here’s what I had to do: I had to put my THIRD finger behind the third fret of the sixth string, my SECOND finger behind the second fret of the fifth string, and MR. PINKIE behind the third fret of the first string. THE FIRST FINGER WAS NOT EVEN GOING TO BE USED IN THE CHORD!

I tried and it was so unnatural. It was PAINFUL. I couldn’t even push the high E string down with my weak pinkie. What could possibly be the purpose in all of this? Mick told me to discipline myself to learn this and the purpose would become apparent. How true his words were!

After weeks of learning to play G in this new way, I found that I could switch to the C chord with much more speed that ever before. I also found that when I switched to the C chord, I could, at will, just leave my pinkie behind the third fret of the high E string, which gave the C chord an entirely new dimension. Then I could leave it on the same way and go right back to G. I also found that playing the G this way left my first finger and my other fingers in an ideal position to go quickly into lead licks. Why not try this yourself? Take the time to get it down and you’ll never go back!

Copyright © 2007 Lee Griffith. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lee Griffith is an avid acoustic guitar player and a vintage instrument enthusiast. He invites you to receive a FREE REPORT on a revolutionary acoustic guitar lesson kit, along with his weekly newsletter via email.

Just click on http://optin.flatpickpost.com

Check out Lee’s blog, “The Flatpick Post” at http://flatpickpost.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Griffith
http://EzineArticles.com/?The-G-Chord-on-the-Guitar—Relearning-It&id=516875

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