Hey, how you doing? Justin here.
Today, we're gonna check out how to play a G chord,
and not just any old G chord.
I'm gonna teach you the G chord I wish people had taught me,
when I was first learning guitar as a little kid.
Cos I struggled with G, man. I used to...
like I had to look for songs that didn't have G in it,
because I just couldn't deal with it.
I couldn't change to it, it was too stretchy,
my fingers just wouldn't get along with it.
And what I've discovered over the years,
is the way that I actually really play it, nearly all of the time,
isn't the way that people teach it. And that doesn't seem to make sense to me.
So I'm gonna show you-- I'm gonna show you the proper traditional one, as well,
just cos I think it's worth you knowing it,
but the two-finger version that I'm gonna teach you,
I think is the one that all beginner guitar players should be starting off with,
and only learn the traditional one later on, if you find a reason for it.
And that "if you find a reason for it" is pretty important.
So, let's have a little look at our G chord.
Now, this is the G chord I'm gonna teach you.
It just involves two fingers.
The 2nd finger playing the 3rd fret of the thickest string.
That finger will also mute the 5th string.
Now, you probably wouldn't be able to not mute it,
unless you really--if you really angle your 2nd finger up like this
and contort your hand, you might be able to get that 5th string open.
But for most people, if you put your 2nd finger
on the 3rd fret of the thickest string,
that 2nd finger is naturally gonna lean over a little bit
and mute the 5th string.
And that's good, that's actually what we want.
Okay? Then we've got an open 4th string, open 3rd string, open 2nd string,
and 3rd finger is going down.
It's gonna have to be quite on the tip there,
on the 3rd fret of the thinnest string.
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So, just those two. Now, I'm pointing my 1st finger out of the way.
I wouldn't normally do that. It would normally just kind of hang around,
but I want you to kind of see that it's just those two fingers.
Okay? Of course, they wanna be both right up next to the fret if you can.
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That's how you do it.
Now, the traditional G, the one that you'll find in 9 out of 10 books,
also includes the 1st finger down here, in the 2nd fret of the 5th string.
So, you get this...
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And it's a good sounding G chord.
It's the way G chord's been played for a long, long time.
But for me, this part of the chord...
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is quite muddy.
Especially in rock guitar. I mean that's a note that you definitely don't want.
But even for acoustic guitar, I think that this...
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sounds a little bit muddy compared to...
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you hear this one's sort of nice and crisp,
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if I add that note in...
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It's just got a bit too much weight in the bottom end.
The bit like the low sound.
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Finger off.
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Here's the finger on.
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For me, it's just a little bit muddy.
It works okay in this environment where the guitar is nice and clean.
We're not using any distortion.
And like I said, it kind of works okay on acoustic guitar as well,
to have that 1st finger down, but I just don't think it's as good.
And it's a lot harder to change to.
If you're doing C to G, which is a really, really common chord sequence.
To get that 1st finger all of the way to there,
and then 2nd finger has to be kind of up,
high enough over to get that note there underneath the 1st finger.
It's pretty tricky! It makes it for a really difficult chord change.
And if you just restrict it to those two fingers,
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there's still a bit of a jump from C to G,
but it's a lot easier.
especially the D chord, again, 1st finger just has to lift off.
And it really is so much simpler and I think better sounding, as well.
If you wanna learn the one with your 1st finger down as well,
there are times where that chord might sound better.
Okay? It's still a G chord, it doesn't change the name or anything.
It's just one of the low notes is doubled. So this note...
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the open 2nd string is the note B,
and this note here with the 1st finger is also a note B.
So we've still got all the same notes.
The G, B and D notes are all still present in the chord.
But just muting that one in that lower register,
and I think that's a better choice for beginners most of the time.
Now, when you go through to do your practice,
I want you to make sure that you're muting that 5th string.
So, start with your hand off for the Chord Perfect exercise.
You're gonna put the fingers down, strum,
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pick the notes out one at a time, making sure the 5th string is muted.
Okay? If it's ringing out,
that means that you're using too much of the tip of your 2nd finger there.
So you wanna lay that 2nd finger back down, just a little bit.
So that one's muted. If it's laying down too flat,
you're gonna mute all of the other strings too.
So it does still need to be kind of up, but...
you want the D string to be open,
G to be open, B to be open. If the B is muted,
it's almost certainly gonna be the tip of that 3rd finger sitting up a little high.
Okay? So make sure that 3rd finger is nice on point,
and not touching the B string.
Otherwise, I don't think you're gonna have too much trouble with this chord.
The two-finger version is way easier than I was anticipating.
Cos I was, you know, G chord, "Oh, that's the scary one!"
In my left-handed adventure, I knew the G chord was coming,
and I was a bit, you know, "This is gonna be a bit tricky!"
but you know what? It wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought
doing the two-fingered version than the full three traditional grip.
It really makes such a big difference.
I'm sure you're not gonna have any trouble with this G chord either.