6 - Guitar Chords Part 2

Beginners Guitar Lessons Part 6 – Guitar Chords Part 2

Great to see you back for lesson six! In lesson three of our beginners learn the guitar series, we talked about the basics of Guitar Chords, and learned the C and G major chords. So let’s continue and get a few more chords mastered!

First up, to make learning the guitar easier, we have provided the lesson on audio which goes hand in hand with the written lesson below.

As we mentioned before, chords are taken from major scales. Since we love the C major scale so much, we’ll work on the other chords that work within C major. Remember that chords are simply groups of complimentary notes taken from a particular scale. Therefore, all the notes contained in the chord must also appear in the scale. Music has rules, which rely on other related rules. So learning the basics right from the start will help you all along the way.

Let’s refresh our memories with the notes of the C major scale. It has no sharps (#) or flats (b) so we start at C and move forward alphabetically:

C    D   E   F   G   A   B
1     2    3   4   5    6   7

Since each key and corresponding chord has a number of sharps and flats (with the exception of C), we’ll need to modify the chords slightly so they contain notes which appear in the major scale we are working in. Our chords will be either major or minor, with the exception of the 7 chord, which in the case of C major is B, will be a diminished chord. Diminished chords are marked with the abbreviation: dim

Just as we have formulas for scales and chords, we have a formula for the basic chords within a key. Note that this does not include every possible chord, but it is a starting point for the basic chords, with others built from them. The basic chord formula for any major key (or major scale) is as follows. The numbers represent the notes within the scale as they appear in order.

1=major chord, 2=minor chord, 3=minor chord, 4=major chord, 5=major chord, 6=minor chord, 7=diminished chord, and finally back to the 1, which is a major chord again.

In the case of C major, our Guitar Chords will be: C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim, and C.

Notice that the name of major chords are not marked as major. So if you see chord marked only by a note name, it will always be a major chord.

Our next chord to learn will be A minor (Am). As we’ll learn in a future lesson, all major scales have what is called a relative minor key. The relative minor key is always the sixth note of any major scale, which in this case is A. The A minor chord contains the notes: A, C and E, and is played like this:

Next, we’ll learn the D minor chord. D minor contains the notes: D, F, A, and is played like this:

Now for the complete C major collection of guitar chords:

Another quick note: When you see a chord with … next to the name, as with the F and Bdim/A above, this means that this is one of several similar versions of the chord.

Practice – Using Guitar Chords To Form A Basic Song

Let’s work on a song using some of our new guitar chords. A slash above the chord name means to strum each time a slash is present. You may also practice the song using one of the strumming patterns we covered in the Picking and Strumming Lesson.

////  ////  ////  ////  ////  ////  ////  ////  ////  ////   ////  ////  ////  ////  ////  ////
C        C        G        G       Am   Am      G        G       Em     Em      Dm    Dm      G        G        C         C

Try different combinations of Guitar Chords and write them down, creating your own song.