Hi! I’m Nate Savage and welcome to lesson 8 of the Rhythm Guitar Quick-Start Series.
Now so far we’ve been going over power chords and bar chords and how to move them all around
the fretboard but no rhythm guitar series will be complete without some open chords.
So in this lesson, I’m going to teach you some of the most essential open chords that you’re
going to need to know as a rhythm guitar player. Bar chords and open chords often go by the
same name but they sound very different. For example, you have your G bar chord right here
that you can use or you can use an open G chord too. Not only do they sound different
but they can be played on different locations on the fret board, so depending on what it
is you’re playing, you may want to use a bar chord at some time and you may want to
use your open chord at other times. It’s important to know both just to give yourself
some tonal options and a greater amount of freedom on the guitar.
The open chords we’re going to be learning in this lesson are G major, C major, D major,
E major, E minor, A major, A minor, B and F. You already kind of know the F and B chords
because I’m just going to be teaching you the bar chord shapes for them. I thought it
was important to include those in this lesson because they’re right down here by where
all of your open chords are. If you already know those chords, that’s fine but I would
encourage you to watch the entire lesson because I’m going to be giving you some tips on
making your chords sound clean and your chord transition sound smooth. This is going to
be a lot of information, so don’t feel like you have to have all of these chords down
before you move on to some other things. Just take one or two at a time, work on them, incorporate
them into your daily practice routine. Once we go through all these open chord shapes,
we’re going to apply them to some of the popular chord progressions that we went over
in a previous lesson. So let’s jump right in. The first chord
we’re going to be learning is an open G chord and there’s two fingerings that I’m
going to show you for this chord. One uses your first, second and third fingers and the
other one uses your second, third and fourth fingers. A lot of newer players use this shape
for their G chord, just because it’s easier than using your pinky but let’s go through
both real quick. Put your second finger on the third fret of the low E string right behind
the fret right down on the very tip of your finger. Then your first finger is going to
grab the second fret of the A string right behind the fret again. And then your third
finger is going to grab the third fret of the high E string. And that’s your open
G major shape. You can strum all six strings for this chord. That’s the first way that
I told you, you can make this chord. The second way is to use the exact same shape but use
your second, third and fourth fingers instead of your first, second and third. And the advantage
to using that fingering for this chord is it’s really easy to get to a C chord, an
open C chord, which is a really common change. So that leads us into our second chord shape,
which is a C major chord. Put your first finger on the first fret of the B string, second
finger on the second fret of the D string, then your third finger is going to grab the
third fret of the fifth string. And for this chord, you leave the low E string out. You
don’t play it at all. And a lot of people have trouble reaching out and grabbing the
third fret with their third finger. That’s the biggest trouble spot for this chord for
most newer players. What you want to do is make sure that you have some good posture
going on with your hand. If you’re having trouble reaching that, bring your elbow down.
It puts your hand in a better position to come grab that note with your third finger.
Next open chord we’re going to look at is an open D major chord. Let me just show it
to you real quick. You’re only going to use the top 4 strings for this chord. Put
your first finger on the second fret of the G string. Then your second finger is going
to grab the second fret of the high E string. Your third finger is going to grab the third
fret of the B string and you’re going to leave the low E and A strings out. Just strum
the top 4 strings. And a problem a lot of players run into with this chord is that their
fingers are so scrunched up here that they end up muting the surrounding strings. For
example, your third finger can really easily mute this high E string if you’re not careful,
so you’re going to want to make sure to come right down the very tips of your fingers.
Next chord we’re going to learn is our open E major shape and if you’ve already learned
your bar chords, then you already know this chord shape. If not, here it is right here.
You can strum all six strings for this chord shape. Put your first finger on the first
fret of the G string. Your third finger is going to grab the second fret of the D string
and your middle finger is going to grab the second fret of the A string. Strum all six
strings. And again your fingers probably feel pretty scrunched up. Make sure you’re not
muting any of the surrounding strings and coming down right on the tips of your fingers.
And one tip that I want to give you here as far as switching between chords smoothly is
to make sure that you have whatever chord shape you’re working on down really well,
where you can go right to it before you start trying to switch between that chord and another
chord. The next chord we’re going to look at is
an open E minor chord and this one is really easy if you know your open E major chord.
All you have to do is take your index finger off of that first fret of the G string and
that gives you an open E minor chord. One thing that I recommend doing is just switching
between an open E major and an open E minor. Alright, the next chord on our list is an
open A major chord and again if you know your bar chord, you already know this but let’s
go over this just in case. Put your first finger on the second fret of the D string.
Then you’re going to come scrunch your second finger right up here on that same fret but
on the G string and then you’re going to get even tighter in here with your third finger
on the second fret of the B string. You have to really scrunch your fingers up to get in
there and leave the low E string out for this chord.
The next tip I want to give you for transitioning between chords and making that smooth is to
anticipate the next chord and try to visualize and feel that chord before you actually need
to move to it. So if I’m switching between an E major and an A major and I know in about
two bars that A major is coming up, I want to be thinking about it, what that chord feels
like and what that chord looks like so I don’t get surprised by it. If you get surprised
by it, you might not hit it clearly. If you’re thinking about it a little bit in advance, you
can visualize it, feel it and go right to it.
Alright on to an A minor, an open A minor chord. Again, if you know your bar chords,
you know that an A minor looks just like that. We’re basically taking this note with our
third finger and moving it back one fret but we have to change our fingering to do that
a little bit. So come back here with your index finger on the first fret of the B string.
Third finger is going to grab the second fret of the G string and your middle finger is
going to grab the second fret of the D string and you’re going to leave, again leave the
low E string out. That’s your open A minor chord. And one thing that help me to remember
this chord is that it feels just like an E major chord shape but it’s moved over one string set.
So let’s move on to our F major chord and
like I said earlier, we’re going to be using a bar chord for this F major chord. Put your
index finger across all six strings on the first fret. Then the rest of your bar chord’s
going to fall in place. Your middle finger is going to grab the second fret of the G
string. Pinky is going to grab the third fret of the G string and your third finger
is going to grab the third fret of the A string. Make sure that you have good bar placement
back here, right behind the fret, kind of on the bony edge of your finger instead of
the soft middle part right there. And if you wanted to make this F major into an F minor,
all you have to do is take your middle finger off and you’ll have an F minor.
Alright, the last chord we’re going to go over is a B major bar chord. Get your first finger
setup on the second fret of the guitar right there and your root note is right here on
the second fret of the A string. So that’s your bar and the rest of your bar chord is
going to fall in place. Your second finger is going to be on the fourth fret of the D
string. Third finger is going to be on the fourth fret of the G string and your pinky
is going to grab the fourth fret of the B string. Try to relax as much as possible when
you’re making these chords. And if your guitar seems like it’s just really hard
to play, you might want to go have that setup by a professional. It’s pretty inexpensive
and it can make your guitar play as easily as possible.
Again, if you want to turn this B major chord into a B minor chord, all you have to do is
kind of make the switch with these three fingers that are making the A shape into an A minor shape.
So take some time and get these shapes down.
It doesn’t have to be over night or even a couple of weeks. Don’t try to tackle too
many at once and don’t try switching between these chord shapes before you have the individual
shapes down. That can be really frustrating. Once you have these chords down, you can start
applying them to some of the more common chord progressions that we went over in the last
lesson. For example, instead of playing a 1, 4, 5 with bar chords, you can use your
open chords to do that – so G, C, D. That’s the 1, 4, 5 progression using open chords.
We can also do the 1, 5, 6, 4 chord progression that we went over using open chords too. So in
the key of G, with bar chords it would be G, D, E minor, C. If we do that with open
chords, do the exact same thing – G, D, E minor, C. It gives you quite a different
sound. It gives you some options that you can choose from depending on what kind of
sound you’re going to want to portray when you’re playing.
Now it’s time to apply these open chords to some real music, so pull up the jam track
for this lesson. It’s basically just the drum loop that you can use to work on these
chord progressions using your open chords – the 1, 4, 5; the 1, 5, 6, 4 or believe
it or not, now you know most of the chords for the key of G major, all except for one.
If you know G, A minor, B minor, C, D, E minor and the seventh chord, the last chord in the
key of G major is a bit of an odd ball. Don’t worry about that one. Just focus on those
six chords and try mixing them up. Come up with your own chord progressions too.
Here’s an example of how I would apply the 1, 4, 5 and the 1, 5, 6, 4 chord progression
to this jam track using these open chords.
Thanks for watching this lesson. I hope you got a lot out of it. In the next lesson, we’re going to go over some fundamental strumming
patterns that are going to serve as the building blocks for a lot of the strumming patterns
you’re going to learn in the future. If you have any questions, you can email me nate@guitarsystems.com
or just leave a comment here on the page and I’ll get back to you there. See you.