Learn Guitar Chords
Guitar Chord Lessons

Want to learn guitar chords the simple way? Want to learn, not just chord fingerings, but also how chords really work on the guitar?

These guitar chord lessons will take you right from the basics through to more advanced chord playing theory. Just follow the path to guitar chord confidence, but don't rush yourself. Those who take their time end up understanding how chords work more easily than those who want to learn it all yesterday.

With clear, "over the shoulder" photos, animated diagrams, jam tracks and audio references, you'll have all the tools you need to discover the many different types of guitar chord. You'll then be ready to jam freely with a band, play many of your favourite songs and, best of all, write your own songs.

Enjoy!

Guitar Chord Basics
The absolute basics of fingering guitar chords on the fretboard. Some essential tips to ensure your chord playing is clean and clear. Take this lesson before you move on to learn guitar chords and their fingerings.

Open Position Guitar Chords
The best place to begin your chord learning journey. 4-part course that takes you through the main open position chords and their interesting variations. Some of the most loved music out there exclusively uses the chords in this course and you'll probably use them for your entire guitar playing life, simply because they sound good!

• Open Major Chords
• Open Minor Chords
• Open 7th Chords
• Other Open Chords

• Jam: Basic Chord Changing Exercises

Power Chords
Power chords are not strictly chords, rather two notes played together (diads). However, they are played in the same context as chords. Power chords are used religiously in rock and heavy metal and sound great under high gain/distortion. Very easy to play, and a good primer for the chord forms we'll come to later.

Barre/Movable Guitar Chords
This is where you move your chord playing away from the first few frets of the guitar to completely dominating the fretboard. Get introduced to how chord voicings appear across the entire guitar neck, and how to open up your chord playing options when improvising or writing your own music.

• E Shape Chords
• A Shape Chords
• C Shape Chords
• G Shape Chords
• D Shape Chords
• Barre Chord Relationships
• Cutting Down Chord Shapes

• Jam: Barre Chord Exercises

Open String Guitar Chords
This series of lessons expands on the open chord shapes from earlier, moving them up the fretboard and using open strings to create unique sounding chords. Some great ideas to be found here, so take a look and expand your chord playing options even further.

• Part 1
• Part 2

Slash Chords
This lesson introduces you to the world of chord inversions, where the bass note of a chord is not necessarily the root note. Also, we look at some simple walking bass lines to compliment our chord progressions.

Funk Guitar Chords
Teaches you those jazzy/bluesy chord voicings heard in funk, starting with the basic barre/movable chord shapes. We then move on to chord phrasing in funk, to really complement those lively grooves (to be covered in the rhythm section). Includes funk inspired jam tracks to help you experiment with different voicings.

Metal Guitar Chords
Modify and add to those basic root-5th powerchords commonly used in metal and you'll have tons more options for making your metal more melodic. Looks at cut down 9th, diminished, suspended and other forms commonly used in heavy metal.

Chord Root Notes
Introduces you to the theory behind how root notes work in forming guitar chords. The root note is the note that gives a chord its tonal center. In other words, once you know the root note is for a given chord, you can apply that chord in several positions and therefore create several voicings for the same chord.

Guitar Chord Theory
This course is for those guitarists who want to understand how chords are constructed and where they "come from". Really adds a new perspective to learning chords on the guitar, showing you how to effectively build your own chords from scratch, using the major scale as your foundation.

• Major & Minor Triads
• Augmented & Diminished Triads
• Seventh Chords
• Extended Chords
• Chord Voicings i
• Chord Voicings ii

• Test your knowledge by trying to find different voicings of the chords you already know.
• Try building your own chord progressions using a selection of chords from the chart.
• Pick out the same chord across all keys and hear how even though the chords use a different root note, they create the same interval sound (e.g. E major, A major, D major - different chords, but the same chord type and flavour).
• Try modifying the chords you learn by adding/removing available fingers/strings. Try also leaving some strings to ring open in the chord shape (this won't work for all positions, but let your ear be the judge of that!)