Meet the guitar
Before any chords, learn the names of the parts, the names of the six strings, and how to get them in tune. Turn your sound on. Everything here is clickable.
The parts that matter
Tap a part to see what it does and where your hands will spend their time.
The six strings
From the thickest (closest to your face when you hold the guitar) to the thinnest: E A D G B E. A mnemonic helps: Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie. The thickest string is the 6th string and the lowest sound. The thinnest is the 1st string and the highest. Use a lowercase e for the thin one so the two Es do not get mixed up.
Click each string. Notice the pitch climbing as the strings get thinner.
Tuning up
The easiest route is a clip-on tuner or a free tuner app: pluck a string, and turn its tuning peg until the display shows the right note. Tighten the string to raise the pitch and loosen it to lower the pitch. Always come up to the note from slightly below, which keeps the string stable.
No tuner nearby? Use the fifth-fret trick. Press the 6th string at the 5th fret and it sounds the same as the open 5th string. Pick a pair below to see and hear it.
One exception. Between the 3rd string (G) and the 2nd string (B), use the 4th fret. The strings are spaced by a slightly smaller step there.
Sitting and holding
- Sit on the front half of a chair. Rest the curve of the body on your right thigh (left thigh if you play left handed).
- Keep the neck angled slightly up, not flat. Your left hand cradles the neck with the thumb resting behind it, roughly opposite your first and second fingers.
- Fret with your fingertips, close to the metal fret wire on the body side of it, and keep your wrist fairly straight.
- Your strumming arm swings from the elbow and wrist, resting lightly on the body.
Checkpoint
Notes on the neck
The fretboard looks like a maze until you know one rule: every fret is the next note up. After that, the maze becomes a grid.
Twelve notes, then it repeats
Western music uses twelve notes. Seven have plain letter names (A B C D E F G) and five sit in between and are called sharps (C♯, D♯, F♯, G♯, A♯). After the twelfth note you are back at the first one, an octave higher. The smallest step between neighbouring notes is a semitone. On the guitar, one fret is exactly one semitone.
Click the strip to hear twelve semitones climb from C to the next C. Two neighbours have no sharp between them: E to F and B to C. Remember those two spots, they explain a lot of music theory later.
The whole neck, mapped
Try the modes below. Click any spot on the neck to hear it, and use Find a note to see every place one note lives. You will notice the same note shows up in several places, and each string is just a shifted copy of its neighbour.
Click anywhere on the neck.
Try this. Set Find a note to C. On the 5th string (A) the first C is at the 3rd fret. On the 2nd string (B) it is at the 1st fret. The same note sits at different frets on different strings, which is why different chord shapes can contain the same notes.
Reading the number lines (tab)
Guitar tab shows six lines for the six strings with the thinnest string on top. A number tells you which fret to press on that string. A 0 is an open string.
e|-----0-----1-----3-----| B|---------------------| G|---------------------| D|---------------------| A|---------------------| E|---------------------|
Checkpoint
Why some notes fit together
Of the twelve notes, a song uses mostly seven at a time, and one of them feels like home. This lesson shows which seven, why that one is home, and exactly how to play two notes together on the guitar.
Seven notes that belong together: the major scale
The do-re-mi sound is a pattern of steps. Between neighbouring notes the gap is either a whole step (two semitones, two frets) or a half step (one semitone, one fret). The major scale is always whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half, whichever note you start from. The note you start on is called the root.
Amber circles are the eight notes of the scale. The numbers under the keys show the step size: 2 is a whole step, 1 is a half step. Click any key to hear it.
The scale as a staircase on one string
On the guitar, steps are frets. A whole step is two frets and a half step is one. Start on an open string and climb that pattern: 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12. The open string is the root, and fret 12 is the same note an octave higher.
How to read a fretboard picture. A fretboard graphic marks where notes live. It is a map, not an instruction to play every marked spot together. In the Lesson 2 map, every note of the guitar is marked. Here, only one string is marked, and you play its notes in order. Chords come later: a chord picks a few specific spots from the map and plays them at the same moment.
Why the root feels like home
Your ear does something clever. While you listen to a tune, it works out which note is the centre, then hears every other note as a distance from that centre. The root is the note everything is measured from, so it is the only note that does not lean toward another one. Every other note leans a little, and the leaning is what creates the feeling of movement in a melody.
Try it. The player climbs the scale and stops where you tell it. Pay attention to how each stopping note feels.
Pick a stopping note
- It is where the scale starts and ends. The pattern begins and finishes there, so it behaves like the front door.
- The 7th leans into it. It sits only a half step below the root, which makes it feel like falling forward into the root.
- It anchors the chord. The chord built on the root, the I chord, is the most settled chord of the key, and its lowest note is the root.
- Home is relative. The same seven notes with a different starting note give a different home. Start on C and C is home. Start on A and the pull moves to A.
Playing two notes together
An interval is the distance between two notes. You can play the pair in two ways: one after another (like a melody) or at the same time (like harmony). Choose both ways below and watch the fretboard. You do not strum all six strings. You hold the marked frets and pluck only the strings that are marked.
Pick an interval
The takeaway. The root, the major third and the fifth sound the most settled, which is why chords are built from them. Notes a step or two away from them add colour and tension that wants to resolve. A song is a conversation between tension and release.
Checkpoint
How chords are built
A chord is three or more notes sounding together. The recipe is the same every time, and it explains why a few finger shapes cover hundreds of songs.
Stack every other note
Take a major scale and number the notes 1 to 7. A basic chord, called a triad, uses note 1 (the root), 3 (the third) and 5 (the fifth). You skip every other note.
Major versus minor is one semitone. Lower the third by one fret and the chord goes from bright and open to dark and wistful. That single note is the whole difference between G and Gm.
Your finger shapes are the same three notes
A guitar has six strings, so a chord shape usually repeats some of the three notes in different octaves. Choose a chord and read the letters under each string. They are always the root, the third and the fifth of that chord.
Checkpoint
Your first chords
Nine open chords carry an enormous share of the songs you love. Learn them in this order, a couple per week, starting with the two that need only a few fingers.
How to read a chord box
- The six vertical lines are the strings. The thick one on the left is the low E, the thin one on the right is the high e.
- Horizontal lines are the frets. The heavy bar at the top is the nut, which means the box starts at the first fret.
- A dot says to press that string there. The number inside is the finger: 1 index, 2 middle, 3 ring, 4 little finger. Your thumb stays behind the neck.
- A circle above a string means play it open. A cross means do not play that string.
The chord library
Fix the buzz. Pluck the strings one at a time with Pluck each string. A dead or buzzing string usually means a finger is too far from the fret wire, is pressing with the pad instead of the tip, or is lying against a neighbouring string. Arch your fingers, press just behind the fret, and let your thumb take the squeeze from behind. Short sessions with rests beat one long grind, and the soreness fades in a couple of weeks.
Checkpoint
Strumming and rhythm
A song is chords plus rhythm. Your strumming hand works like a pendulum that never stops, and the pattern decides which swings actually hit the strings.
Count in eighths
Count each bar as 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Your hand moves down on the numbers and up on the "ands", all the time, even when it misses the strings. A pattern is just a choice about which of those eight swings make a sound. D is a downstroke, U is an upstroke, and a dash is a swing that misses.
Click a cell to cycle it between down, up and a missed swing. Start slowly. If you stumble, drop the tempo until it feels lazy, then climb back up.
Rule of thumb. If the hand stops, the groove stops. When you cannot play a pattern, keep the pendulum moving and thin the pattern out instead. Down quarter notes are a perfectly good song.
Checkpoint
Changing chords
Playing a chord is not what makes a song hard for a beginner. The change between two chords is. Treat it as its own skill and practise it on its own.
Habits that make changes faster
- Look for what stays. Many pairs share a finger. Keep it on the string and move the others around it.
- Move all fingers together. Lift, travel and land as one shape, not one finger at a time.
- Think one beat ahead. Say the next chord's name just before you change, and let the strumming hand carry on.
- Slow beats fast. Clean at 50 BPM becomes fast on its own. Sloppy at 100 BPM becomes a habit.
Change trainer
Pick a pair. The trainer plays one chord for the number of bars you choose, then switches, with a click on every beat. You change on the bar line, so you always have the whole last bar to prepare.
The one-minute test
Set a timer for sixty seconds, change back and forth between two chords as many times as you can with every string ringing, and tap the button for each clean change. Retest weekly and watch the number go up.
Beginners often manage 10 to 20 in a minute. Around 30 is enough for most songs.
Checkpoint
Keys and chord families
Most pop songs borrow chords from one family: the chords you get by building a triad on each note of a major scale. Learn the family and you can predict the next chord by ear and shift any song to a key that suits the singer.
Build the family
Lesson 4 stacked a triad on the first note of the scale. Do the same on every note and you get seven chords, named with Roman numerals. Capital numerals are major chords and lowercase are minor. The pattern is always the same: I ii iii IV V vi (the seventh chord is rarely used in simple songs).
What each chord feels like
- I is home. Songs start and end here.
- IV lifts away from home, warm and open.
- V builds tension and pulls strongly back to I.
- vi is the relative minor, the same family with a wistful face. It is what turns a cheerful loop into a bittersweet one.
- ii and iii are softer colours that glide between the others.
Progression builder
Build four bars by clicking numerals, or load a famous recipe. Change the key and the same pattern turns into different chords. The sound is the same, only higher or lower.
It uses your strumming pattern. The builder plays whatever pattern you left in Lesson 6. Go back and change it to hear the same chords in a different groove.
Checkpoint
Songs to sing to
Now the pieces join up. Pick a song, set a key that suits the singer, loop the chords with a pattern, and let people sing over you.
Learn a song in five passes
- Chords. Check which shapes you need. If you know them all, you are ready. If not, learn the missing one on its own first.
- Hardest change. Find the change that trips you up and drill it with the Lesson 7 trainer.
- Loop the bars. Play the chart below at a slow tempo with a down-strum pattern. Do not worry about the words yet.
- Add the groove. Switch to the Campfire pattern and bring the tempo up to the record.
- Hum on top. Hum the melody while you strum, then add the words from your own lyric sheet. When you can talk and strum at the same time, you can play for friends.
Song library
Each chart is the simplified, singalong version of the chord loops, not a note-for-note transcription. Check it against a recording and nudge anything that sounds off. Words are not included, so bring your own lyric sheet.
Setting the key for the singer
A song is not tied to one key. If the melody sits too high or too low for the singer, change the key until the highest and lowest notes are both comfortable. Two tools do it. Choose different shapes (the chord family from Lesson 8 shifts with the key) or move a capo up the neck. A capo clamps across the strings at one fret and raises every chord by that many semitones, so familiar shapes sound higher. Try it above: the "It sounds in" key changes while the shapes you play stay the same.
Chord shapes marked with a dashed outline need a barre chord. Those come later, so choose a key that avoids them for now.
Checkpoint
A practice plan that works
Fifteen focused minutes a day beats two hours on Sunday. Your fingertips need daily short contact to harden and your brain needs sleep between sessions to file the shapes away.
The daily fifteen
- Warm up. Pluck each open string, then walk one finger up one string a fret at a time.
- Chord changes. Pick the pair that is hardest this week and use the trainer.
- Strumming. One pattern, one chord, a steady pendulum.
- A song. Loop its chart. The song is the reward, so end on it.
Four weeks to your first singalong
Week 1
Lessons 1 to 3. Tuning, notes on the neck, Em and Am with steady down strums.
Week 2
Add E, A and D. Play the Campfire pattern. Try the Knockin' on Heaven's Door chart in G.
Week 3
Add C and G. Work through the Lesson 7 pairs. Learn I Will and Stand By Me.
Week 4
Add the mini F. Play Let It Be. Set a key for a friend's voice and play it for them.
When it feels stuck
- Fingers hurt. Normal for the first two weeks. Stop when it burns, and play again tomorrow.
- Chords buzz. Check fingertip placement and arching. Pluck each string to find the culprit.
- Changes stay slow. Halve the tempo and do the one-minute test every few days.
- Rhythm falls apart. Go back to down quarters and bring the pattern in one swing at a time.
- You are bored. Play one of the songs. The chord drills exist to serve the songs.