If you want to learn the guitar, chords are a good place to start. This is
because guitar chords are one of the fundamentals. There are literally
thousands of chords, these are used to play all styles of music. Luckily
however, there are only very few that you actually need to know.
When you first start out, learning
chords can be tough. The key however is to get the technique,
fingering and structure of the chord right from the start. Like with
all guitar techniques, knowing exactly what to do will help in avoiding
hours of frustration.
The aim with chords is to be able
to form them quickly and produce a nice clean sound on the first strum. With
practice, eventually you will be able to switch between chords with ease
and play songs.
The basic major chords are made up of 3 notes. These
notes directly correspond to notes in the major scale.
These are:
root note - 1st note in the major scale.
major 3rd - 3rd note in the major scale.
perfect 5th - 5th note in the major scale.
Minor chords
(Minor triads)
Quick theory
The basic minor chords, like major
chords, have 3 notes that also correspond to a scale (the minor scale).
root note - 1st note in the minor scale.
minor 3rd - 3rd note in the minor scale.
perfect 5th - 5th note in the minor scale.
The difference between major and minor
chords
Both the root note and the perfect 5th are the same
in the major and minor scales. This means that the difference between a
major and minor chord is simply one note. For the major chord this is the
major 3rd and for the minor chord this is the minor 3rd.
Guitar chords
