Learning Guitar Chords - Step by Step

Learning guitar chords is a very rewarding endeavor. By doing so, you will be able to play your favorite songs as well as entertain your friends and family. In addition the self-confidence you build up as you learn guitar chords is quite amazing. You might be surprised how good you feel the first time you effortlessly pull off the chords to your favorite songs.

Here then is the step by step process I go through when learning guitar chords. Just follow along with your guitar and you will be cranking out Bob Dylan songs in no time!

1) Learn to read chord charts:

In a nutshell, a chord chart is a picture or diagram of the guitar neck, which tells you where to place your fingers to perform the chord being pictured. The vertical lines are the strings from the thickest to the thinnest (i.e. Low E to high E); this is measured from left to right. The left most vertical line is the low E string or 6th string. The numbers below the chart tell you which finger to place on each fret. The frets are the horizontal lines and are numbered from 0 (the nut) to usually the 5th fret or sometimes higher.

Once you have the chart to a couple of chords (in the beginning I suggest G - C - D as your starting chords), begin practicing them over and over for a couple of weeks, moving back and forth between each of them, until the movement is in time and smooth

2) Learn the chords to your favorite songs:

Go do an internet search for some of your favorite songs and get the chord chart for them. You might also have to look up a separate chord chart for each chord in the song. Generally it is much easier and much more fun to learn the chords to songs. This will get you to practice more. You will now want to go through the chord progression learning each chord using the exercise given above learning two chords and how to change between them at a time. You can watch a video explanation of this by doing a search for the song and video.

3) Practice until you can think about a trip to Boston while playing:

I once asked one of my young students (I think she was about 8 or so) how long she thought she needed to practice each part of the chord progression I was teaching her. Her response was "until I can think about a trip to Boston?" I love that response. She is right of course; you must develop muscle memory for each chord you learn. This takes about 4 to 6 months usually. You will usually be able to play the song reasonably well before then, but you will still have to concentrate on what you are doing, when you can hold a conversation and still play the chords to the song you are working on you will know you have really mastered those chord changes.

So that's my step by step process for learning guitar chords. I usually spend about ten to thirty minutes a day on this process for each song. It really all depends on how hard the song is. The best way to really speed this process up is to follow a good guitar learning course. A step by step course will take you from one chord and song to the next without having to figure out what to learn next. That really is the best way to learn guitar chords.

View the original article here