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A Guide for Beginner - More Major Chords

by Christopher Sung

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10

The goal of this lesson is to enable you to play all of the major chords. If you took my "A Guide for Beginners - Major Chords", you should be familiar with the C, A, G, E, and D major chords. These chords used open strings. Unfortunately, those chords are really the only major chords that you can play using open strings. From here on in, we'll have to use barre chords. So, what, pray tell, is a barre chord? Well, you'll learn that in page 2.

I don't expect you to be able to play the example below, but this exercise is the eventual goal of this lesson - to be able to play all of the major chords. One great way to learn a chord (such as a major chord) in all keys is to play a chord and then play the same chord but up 5 frets, and then continuing on. For example, if you play an E chord like in measure 1, if you go up 5 frets, the root note is A, so you play an A chord. If you go up 5 frets from there, you get D, and so on. Thus, the chords to play for this exercise are:

E · A · D · G · C · F · Bb · Eb · Ab · C# · F# · B

After you get to the end, you will have played every single possible major chord. Also note that in the exercise below, the first 5 chords use open strings - after that you have to start barring with your first finger. More on that in the next page.