Lessons Guitar chords

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Welcome to my Chords page where you will find just about every chord that is commonly used on the guitar... well you will in a couple of years when I get it completely finished ;) but all the main ones are here now!

You would be best avoiding the ridiculous "1, 000, 000 Chord Shapes" books, they contain many useless chords that are just there to make the numbers up, impractical and sound awful and never used by real guitar players. I know because I have friends who have written some of those books and I know they get pressure from publishers for numbers, not quality. Same with many of the online chord dictionary things, even though the chords are theoretically correct, they just don't sound good.

I suggest working you way down the page and making sure that you know ALL the chords and when you find one that you don't know - click on it and do the lesson. That said I would STRONGLY suggest going all the way through the Beginners Course. (if you have not done so already) because there are many hints on the chords and more importantly, how to use and practice them!

The Eight Essential Beginner Open Chords

All there chords are covered in the Beginners Course. If you don't know them I would strongly suggest you going through the course and learning them properly - as well as knowing the shapes you should learn how to practice them, use them and change between them!

Click on the chord to go to a lesson that teaches it!

Dominant 7th Open Chords (Beginners)

F Chord For Beginners

Suspended Open Chords (Beginners)

Suspended chords are usually used to embellish normal chords - so it's important to learn how to use them, not just what the shape is! Again, these are covered in the Beginners Course...

Common Open Slash Chords (Beginners)

No they have nothing to do with Slash from Guns 'n' Roses - they are chords with a bass note other than the root. These are all covered in the Beginners Course and are all very common and sound cool. There are many thousands of possibilities, but these are the ones you are most likely to find in the real world because they sound good!

Power Chords (Beginners)

These are the starting point for barre chords, learning these first will make the transition to full barre grips a load easier! They again are part of Beginners Course... The cool thing is that the shape remains the same, you just have to move them around! Click on the chord shapes to get the full lesson and learn how to use the root notes and all that! It's real important...

E Shape Barre Chord Grips (Intermediate)

These are covered in The Intermediate Course and links will be added when the course is fully live...

A Shape Barre Chord Grips (Intermediate)

Triad Chord Grips (Intermediate)

These are covered in The Intermediate Course and will be added when the course is fully live... but I also have a lesson on them that I will pull down once the intermediate ones are live, cos I think I did the lesson better on that and it's essentially the same!

The CAGED System (Intermediate)

I have a 6 lesson series on The CAGED system, starts with a video and is then text and illustrations (it's also the last part of Practical Music Theory) and at this stage you really need to understand what it is and how it works and WHY it's so important!

Basic Funk Chords (Intermediate)

Probably the best introduction to using extended chords is to check out some Funk! Learn how to use your 9th, 11th and 13th in a funk context. It's always a good idea to be putting things into practice, and funk is a great style for playing about with dominant chords!! RH-021 • Basic Funk Chords

Chord Extensions (for serious players!)

My advice is to print out a chord box paper page for each chord type (Major, Minor, Dominant, Altered) in each of the CAGED positions (so you will have 20 pages) and then fill in as many chords as you can in each position.

For example in "A Shape" / "Major chords" - you should have maj, a couple of maj 7, a couple of maj 9, maj 11, maj 13, maj 6, maj 6/9, maj 7#11 etc.