These six common chords are a good place to start. The first few months of chord work for a beginner are about:
memorising shapes and names plus the names of the notes inside each
hardening the fingertips
learning to arch the fingers
learning to adjusting your grip without moving your fingertips
developing the stretch between fingers
learning to pick & strum consistently
internalising the sound of each chord
Once these elements start to become functional you can start thinking about jumping between them.
Bear in mind the names of chords are often shortened depending on the context or person communicating the facts e.g.
A minor = Am or A -
C Major = C
Here are the note locations of each chord on the board. There are no fingers suggested (see the video) but you should be prepared to be flexible with the fingers you use so that you can eventually land on them with a different set as required to make the following chord easier or more musical:
Each chord of the set has three notes inside called triad:
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 the chords with your fretboard diagram, you’ll see some of the triad 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 gradually ingesting the chord shapes. 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.
