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The E Chord Group
In this lesson, you’ll learn how to play 3 more chords that are almost just like the E chord shape we’ve already worked with. These new chords have fancy sounding names, but don’t let them scare you. To play them requires you to take a finger away. In that sense, they are easier to play…
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The Five Basic Chord Shapes
There are 5 basic chord shapes on the guitar. These basic chord patterns are the C, A, G, E, and D major chords. In the next few lessons, we’ll take a closer look at these shape. You should already know the A major chord from our previous lesson. These are ‘major chords’ which are a…
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How To Read Chord Diagrams
Your first step in learning how to play chords is learning how to read chord diagrams. Chord diagrams are a neat way to show us a graphical representation of the guitar’s fretboard. Visualizing The Fretboard Below is a blank chord diagram. Think of it as a picture of your guitar sitting in front of you.…
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Guitar Chords: An Introduction
In this lesson you’ll learn a little about chords and what you can expect in subsequent lessons. I’ll give you three rules to help you succeed at playing chords and a timetable for completing the course. What Are Chords? Chords are simply three or more notes sounding at the same time. Most of the chords that…
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Getting Started
Guitar Chords: An Introduction In this lesson, you’ll learn a little about guitar chords and what you can expect in subsequent lessons. I’ll give you three rules to help you succeed at playing chords and a timetable for completing the course. How To Read A Chord Diagram Chord diagrams show us, in graphical form,…
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Beyond Open Chords: Barre Chords Mini Course
Beyond Open Chords Open chords are great, but all chords can’t be played in the open position. You’ll notice that there are chords that seem to be missing such as F chords and B chords as well as chords with sharps or flats. Well, these chords don’t have their own shapes on the fretboard. To…
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Cmaj7 (C major seventh chord)
The C major seventh (also know as CM7, Cmaj7). Where major and minor triads have 3 different notes, 7th chords have 4. We can construct the CM7 chord by taking a look at the C Major Scale: We can take the 1st, 3rd, 5th notes of the scale to create the C major chord. To make a C major seventh…
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Diminished Chords
Yikes! The diminished chord has frightened guitar plays for years. What is this strange beast? How the heck do you play it? What is it used for? In this lesson, you’ll discover the answer to these questions and I’ll reveal to you why you should never skip the diminished chord. The diminished chord is an interesting…
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G/B Chord
The G/B chord is a slash chord or slashed chord, also called a compound chord. A slash chord is a chord whose bass note or inversion is indicated by the addition of a slash and the letter of the bass after the root note letter. It does not indicate “or”. So, in other words: slash chords are just normal chords with one note changed. The note altered is…
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Power Chords vs. Barre Chords
A power chord is but a fragment of a barre chord, but they are much easier to play than a barre chord. This allows you to quickly change chords, but they don’t offer the harmonic quality found in a full bar chord. So which one do you play in a given piece? While power chords…