How To Read A Guitar Chord Diagram for Beginners

in this lesson I'm going to show you the

secret map that's going to help you

learn any kind of chord you would ever

want to play on the guitar and that is

the chord diagram learning how to read a

chord diagram is an essential skill as a

guitar player especially when you're

getting started because it is the map of

what your fingers do on the fretboard of

the guitar to actually play a chord like

an E minor chord or a c chord or a G

chord or a D chord right and you saw as

I was playing through all those chords a

little diagram popped up on screen those

are chord diagrams and like I said

they're just a map to show you what to

play and what not to play on your guitar

to make a chord sound good let's start

with a very easy chord one of the first

chords that I teach in my free guitar

crash course which is the e- miner chord

okay and if you're interested in

grabbing that there's a link in the

description below you can go grab that

absolutely free

and what we're doing here is I have two

fingers all right so if you look on the

chord diagram you'll see that there's a

bunch of lines and a bunch of blocks

okay so the blocks represent the Frets

and at the top of the diagram we have

the first fret then the second fret

third fret so forth and so on now you're

also going to see some lines on that

chord diagram which refer to the strings

so we have the string on the bottom of

your guitar which is the skinny E string

so we have e b g e d a e so what this

map basically tells you is what string

to play in what block now my chord

diagrams are nice I give you the fingers

or the common fingers that you might use

to play these chords not all chord

diagrams do that sometimes they'll just

give you little black dots without any

numbers in them and for beginners

especially that's not very helpful

because how do you know what finger to

use right so on my chord diagrams I'm

going to tell you what finger to use

we're going to start with the easy one

which is this E minor chord now you're

going to notice at the top there are

some circles okay on these E B and G

strings and then on this low E string

there's little circles on the top what

does that mean that means we're going to

play the string open so the strings are

just going to ring they're not going to

have a finger on them and if you look at

this E minor chord we're going to have

the first finger and the second finger

now if you've learned an E minor core

before some people ask me well Lauren I

like to use my second and third finger

that's also a very common way to play an

E minor chord for the purpose of this

lesson I'm going to show you my way

which is the first and second finger

okay first finger is going to go on the

second fret so we're going to look at

the diagram and you'll see it's down two

blocks and it's telling us the first

finger is on the a string and then right

below that you'll see a number two and

it's going to tell me that the second

finger is on the D string and that's all

that this diagram is telling it's and

it's saying you can play all six strings

so E minor is a six string chord and you

get to strum all six strings and it will

sound good now if we go to something

like a c chord you're going to see that

this top string has an X okay that's

telling us as much as possible do not

play that string it's not part of the

chord we don't want to hear it okay so

if you have a c chord you're going to

see this is a full c chord not the easy

c chord I teach in the crash course all

right you're going to see the third

finger on the third fret okay of the a

string the second finger is going to be

on the second fret of the D string then

we have an open G string first finger on

the B string um first fret and then we

have an open E string okay so you're

going to see an x on the top which means

don't play then a three a two an open

symbol at the top my first finger and

then another open symbol on the bottom

so if I were to strum a C chord I would

only want to strum the bottom five

strings if you look at a d chord you're

going to see there's two x's so we're

going to try not to hit the top two

strings all right just some things that

you need to know on a chord diagram it's

going to tell you what strings to play

what strings you can't play because if

you

do it's it might make the chord sound

harsh and I think this is a little bit I

think the acoustic guitar is a little

bit more forgiving than the electric

guitar but if you hit bad notes on a

chord it's going to sound a little off

and we call that dissonance in music

it's just like this little harshness

things don't sound like they they blend

together what we call Harmony things

that work really really well together in

music so you need to make sure if you

see those little X's try as much as

possible to not play those strings if

you see opens little circles on the top

we are going to play the strings and

then when you see the little black dots

that indicates where your fingers go now

there's one more thing I want to show

you that's quite important not so much

at the beginner level but as you

progress in the guitar you're going to

come across something that is called a

bar chord now when you see a bar chord

I'm going to put an F chord over here

you're going to see this big thick black

line that goes all the way across the

fretboard and what that's saying is

we're going to take our first finger and

we're going to play

across multiple strings so you'll see on

this F Chord my first finger is playing

the top E string but it's also playing

the E and B strings and you heard I

muted that on the bottom that was a bad

F chord and then I have other fingers

playing other strings but whenever you

see that big thick line across the top

that's indicating a bar chord they are

very hard to play I usually do not

recommend them for absolute beginners

until you build up enough hand strength

to actually play the chords now if

you're wondering where all these names

come from a chord F chord c chord D

chord we're going to learn in the next

lesson a little bit about the musical

alphabet which is super important in

understanding where some of these names

come from and why so if you want to

learn more about the musical alphabet go

watch my next video right over there