These common chords are a good place to start hardening those fingertips, learning to arch your fingers, adjusting your grip, stretching a little, get some picking & strumming - as you move gradually towards the time when the shapes are automatic and can be changed as per the chord progressions in the songs you want to learn.
The names of chords are often shortened e.g.
A minor = Am
C Major = C
Here are the note locations on the board:
Each chord has three notes inside called triads:
Am = A C E
Dm = D F A
Em = E G B
A = A C# E
D = D F# A
E = E G# B
If you look at them on your fretboard diagram of note names, you’ll see some of those three notes occur more than once depending on the size of the chord.
You will also notice that they occur in any order within the chord.
Learn the note names and triad along with the shapes.
Try different combinations of fingers for each chord, they will all come in use later down the line.
Make sure you are manipulating the position of your thumb and angle of your fingers and wrist to increase arching and stretching ability.
Sometimes it is just the soft fingertips that are splaying out into the neighbouring strings that are preventing a note ring. This will improve naturally as they harden.
Work on alternate-picking, finger-picking and strumming patterns while your hand is fighting the chord shape. Let your fretting hand rest every few mins but keep picking the open strings, you cannot be too good of confident as a picker.
Don’t be demoralised if you can’t get these first chords working. It can take weeks or months with certain shapes. Chords are the most difficult forms to master even though beginners are inflicted with them from the start. Interestingly, the more advanced chords (with names like D7 or A sus2) are often easier to fret than these basic chords, so that’s a bonus.
Don’t attempt to play Bar chords until you have these done - you will just be frustrated and wonder how this is even possible because the grip is specialised and depends on the other fingers being trained first.
Don’t spend all your time on chords, you need to split your time between them and SCALES, TECHNIQUE, THEORY and your favourite songs in every practise session.
