How to Play Guitar Chords For Beginners

To learn how to play guitar chords you must be able to read chordboxes

Here’s the chordbox for “A Minor 7”.

• The vertical lines are the guitar’s strings (the thickest string in on the left).
• The horizontal lines are the guitar’s frets.
• ‘X’ means ‘don’t play this string’.
• ‘O’ means ‘play this string’.

The circles with numbers inside are showing you where to press your fingers and which fingers to use. Your fingers are numbered like this:

If you’d like to learn more about how to read chord boxes read this article of ours:

How To Read Guitar Chordboxes In 60 Seconds

Use Stepping Stone Chords

Stepping-stone chords allow beginner guitarists to learn how to play guitar chords faster.

Think of it like this: If you were training for a marathon you wouldn’t just jump in and try and run 26 miles. That would be crazy, you’d start with a really small distance then build your way up. This is exactly the same with guitar.

Don’t start with the hardest chords. Start with the easiest and work your way up.

Some hard chords you should avoid

Chords like C Major and G Major can be incredibly difficult to start with and put a lot of people off learning guitar.

If you want to learn how to play guitar chords you must know C and G, but these two chords can be big barriers for newbies:

G Major

C Major

These chords use 3-4 fingers and that’s crazy-hard for someone who has just picked up a guitar.

We can make things a lot easier by using stepping-stone chords that are different voicings of C and G.

Let’s look at some easier versions.

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How to play guitar chords quickly and easily

Check out these easy stepping stone chords.

G6

G6 is a great chord for beginners, as it only uses two fingers but has a big sound.

So instead of playing the G major chord we looked at above, you can play G6.

To play this chord you:

1. Place your 2nd finger on the 3rd fret of the low E string.
2. Place your 1st finger on the 2nd fret of the A string.
3. Strum all the strings!

It should sound like this:

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To learn more easy ways to play G read this article of ours:

4 Easy Ways To Play The G Chord On Guitar

C major 7

Cmaj7 is an awesome chord for beginners as it uses two fingers, but also sounds nice and jazzy.

It sounds great when we put our C Major 7 and A minor 7 chord together, as they both have a smooth jazzy sound.

Whenever you see a C chord, you can use Cmaj7 as a substitute.

To play this chord you:

1. Place your 2nd finger on the 3rd fret of the A string.
2. Place your 1st finger on the 2nd fret of the D string.
3. Strum from the A string.

It should sound like this:

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Here are loads of brilliant ways to play this essential beginner chord:

Easy Ways To Play The C Guitar Chord

E Minor

The Em chord is great for beginners, it’s small, simple and really easy to play.

To play this chord you:

1. Place your 1st finger on the 2nd fret of the A string.
2. Place your 2nd finger on the 2nd fret of the D string.
3. Strum all the strings!

Hey Presto! You’ve got an E minor chord.

Here’s what it should sound like

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For more Em chords, read this article:

4 Easy Ways To Play Em

A Minor 7

A Minor 7 is another great simple chord for beginner guitar players, it uses two fingers and sounds sweet.

To play this chord you:

1. Place your 2nd finger on the 2nd fret of the D string.
2. Place your 1st finger on the 1st fret of the B string.
3. Strum from the A String.

Here’s what it should sound like.

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For more Am chords read this:

Am Guitar Chord For Beginners

Dsus2

This chord is great for beginners as it uses just two fingers and sounds great.

Whenever you see a D chord, you can use Dsus2 as a substitute.

To play this chord you:

• Place your 1st finger on the 2nd fret of the G string.
• Place your 3rd finger on the 3rd fret of the B string.
• Strum from the D string.

It should sound something like this.

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If you’d like to know more about other types of D chords you can play read this:

3 Easy Ways to Play the D Chord on Guitar

The importance of keeping in time

When learning how to play guitar chords we can’t just focus on our hands. We have to focus ‘inwards’ too.

Keeping in time is vital.

We never want to be too slow or too fast between each strum. We want each strum to be even and clear. If you lose time, it often feels like the music drags, or is rushed.

How do we keep in time?

Most of us know what a beat feels like, we’ve all grown up with music around us. When you hear music, you tap along to it. You feel the beat!

This is really important to know and understand as guitar players, because if we can feel the beat we can keep in time.

Usually the beat has a constant pulse, this is what we feed off and try to emulate.

A really useful tool for musicians is a metronome.

Metronomes are a time keeping device, they keep constant even beats and never go out of time.

You can get many metronome apps, like this one.

To help us practice our timing we can do a few simple things.

• Firstly, set the metronome to around 60 bpm.
• Listen to each click to feel and understand the placement of each beat.
• Try to strum along with each one.

When you’re strumming, you can either use your favourite chord or strum all the strings.

What’s important here is that you focus on regular timing.

Learning how to play guitar chords is pointless if you don’t strum them in time! 🙂

Download this lesson’s worksheet to save or print for future reference