How to Learn Classical Guitar Chords (and Why They’re So Great)

Classical guitar demands that we build many skills at the same time. We need to learn to read music, learn proper technique, learn common right-hand patterns, learn chords, weird vocabulary, left-hand exercises, and a host of other things.

Contents:

Why Learn Guitar Chords?
The Memory Challenge
Which Guitar Chords Should You Learn?
Learning Beginner Guitar Chords
Chords that Sound Good Together
How Chords Make the Difference
Download the Guitar Chords PDFs

It shouldn’t be surprising that for adults who begin their guitar journey in the classical guitar realm, learning chords often gets bumped to the back seat. Practicing beginner guitar chords often gets tossed into the “maybe later” pile.

This is a shame because the classical guitar is organized around chords. It’s what the guitar does well. And this is true for classical music as much as for acoustic or electric guitar music.

Chords are one of the building blocks in nearly all musical genres, from rock music and blues music, to pop music and classical music. Learning how to play commonly used chord shapes will give us access to countless songs.

Whether we are reading from standard notation or from guitar tabs, knowing the most common chord shapes will help with almost everything that we play on the guitar.

Most beginners find it challenging to smoothly change between chord shapes. This is completely normal, and there are many different ways to overcome it. When we start practicing guitar chords with correct hand placement and a steady beat, we can master chord changes and feel comfortable doing so.

Below is a beginner’s guide to learning the most common chord shapes. You’ll find quite a bit of information, two videos, and a challenge (are you game?).  You’ll see chord diagrams and pictures of open chords.  (“Open” means the chord uses strings with no fingers pressing – the “open” string.)

And finally, you’ll hear an anecdote showing the power of guitar chords.

The Memory Challenge: Music and Language

Try this: Give yourself 5 seconds to try to memorize the following letters:

Test #1:      AOEULRCHKOUSNT

Got it? Great! (yeah right.) Even if you did get this one, how well will you be able to recall it tomorrow?

Now do this one:

Test #2:    The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Why is the second so much easier to memorize? Because the letters fall into recognizable groups. And the groups fall into an order that makes sense, and all work together to convey an idea.

As I’m sure you realize, we can draw the analogy of the letters in the first example to notes on the page, the groups (words) in the second example to chords, and the order of the words to a chord “progression” (a string of chords).

letters = notes
words = chords
sentences = chord progressions

Of course the letters and words are easier to recognize, but only because we have so much more practice with them.

With time, we can recognize and recall notes and chords in the same way.  As beginner guitarists, we may struggle at first. But we improve with time and focused guitar practices.

Which Guitar Chords Should You Learn?

In beginner guitar lessons, we often start with a C chord (aka C Major chord).  From there we learn the G Major Chord, and the D Major chord.  These three (C, G, and D) are very common and popular chord shapes. Practice changing chords between these.  This will get easier and quicker in time.

Keep your thumb behind your fingers.  And it also helps to have your guitar neck pointing up (not down).  Click here for how to hold your guitar.

Below is a chord chart (aka chord diagram) with dots representing chords.  “X” means do not play that string.  “O” (for open) means play open strings with no fret/finger pressed. And the 1, 2, 3, and 4 refer to the index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and little finger (pinky) respectively.

(Tip: You can enter your email address in one of the boxes on this page to download open chord diagrams and resources for your practice. And for a practice-along video tutorial to help you get started, see the Classical Guitar Beginner Toolbox.)

Learning the Beginner Chords

In the movie “What About Bob”, Bill Murray’s character (Bob) uses the tactic of “baby-stepping” through whatever situation in which he finds himself.

The basic idea is that anything can be taken one moment, and one little piece, at a time.  Including these easy chords.

Just as when you are learning a new language, it can be easier to memorize new material when it shares a context.  In language, this would be sentences (i.e. “Where is the library?”).

When learning open chord shapes, it can be useful to learn and practice changing chords in groups that naturally and frequently occur together.  Just like with words, this trains you to not only know the chords but to be able to move from one to the next (like words in a sentence).  This is a guitar practice that works at any level or age.

Practicing chords in this way trains your muscle memory to move fluidly between chord shapes, and allows you to remember easier because of the context. Whether you’ve just started learning to play the guitar or you’ve been at it for a while, learning to play guitar chords in this way also painlessly introduces an important concept in music theory: chord progressions.

The most common types of chords on the guitar are major chords, minor chords, and 7 chords.  There are other types of chords, but these are the most used.  When we see “Em” or “em”, it refers to an E minor chord.  Just the bare letter, such as “E”, refers to an E major chord. Major chords and minor chords have a different sound and mood, as you’ll hear as you play them.

Chords are common to all types of guitar that tune to standard tuning.  Electric guitar, acoustic guitar (steel-string), and classical guitar all have the same chords.  We may use these basic guitar chords more or less depending on the style of music, but the chords sound the same on all guitars.  So as you’re learning chords, you’re also practicing a skill that can serve you in the future, should you decide to play a different guitar. Practicing chords is also a great way of getting to grips with the basics of music theory.

And once you have these basic chords mastered, you can dive into using a capo, barre chords, and slash chords! You’ll discover that for each basic primary chord shape, there is also a matching barre chord that can be useful in many situations.

Learn Guitar Chords to Help Musical Memory

Learning to play guitar chords also helps your musical memory and understanding.

Here’s a story:

Superhero: The Memorizer

I was taking a lesson with a guitar teacher in Atlanta once.

He was a classical and flamenco guitarist, and the music store (Maple Street Guitars) had recommended him for a guitar lesson while I was in town visiting my sister.

I had some music I had been working on for months. It was close to memorized, but not quite.

Recognizing chords in pieces of music can help us learn faster and more easily.

In the course of our lesson, without even seeming to try, he memorized the entire piece. Every note – I was amazed!

“How’d you do that?!” I asked.

I felt it was some virtuosic trick or special power he got after being bitten by a radioactive spider.

“It’s a fairly simple chord progression. I just used the harmony and filled in the blanks.” He answered.

At this point, I had been playing guitar for several years (I was a couple of years into classical guitar after playing folk for several years).

I knew my basic primary and barre chords, and had my chord changes smooth.

But I hadn’t made the connection in my mind between knowing my chords and memorizing my classical guitar pieces.

It was a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

From that point, I decided to start trying to notice when parts of the basic chord shapes I already knew showed up in my pieces.

The chords weren’t always complete guitar chord shapes, but if I could notice the chord “fragments”, I could create a basic structure (like a plot in a story) that would help me remember where I was in the piece.

What I found was that by doing this from the start of the piece, I learned much more quickly, and memorized my pieces much more easily.

That is why members of The Woodshed® Classical Guitar Program use custom materials and techniques to train their brains to recognize chord patterns.  It makes music make sense.  And this helps them learn pieces much more easily.  Click here to learn more about how joining as a member can help you elevate your guitar playing.