Music Tips

Learning how to play guitar chords is one of the first steps beginner guitarists will take in developing their guitar skills. All students find it challenging at first, but the truth is that with practice, it holding down a chord will be as natural as holding a glass of water. All it takes is practice, just a couple of minutes a day.

Here are some tips on how to effectively learn and practice guitar chords:

1. Keep your fingers close to that metal fret which is closer to the body of the guitar, and push down hard on the string with just the tip of your finger. Your fingers will be sore for a couple of days, but with time your skin will get hard and you won't even feel it.
2. Hold down a chord, and at first just pluck one string at a time (arpeggio). Listen to the tone of each string.
3. If any string is not ringing clearly or is rattling, you are either not holding it down hard enough, or one of your fingers is touching a string it's not supposed to be touching. Check your fingers.
4. Your fingers should be arched over the other strings, so you are not unintentionally touching any strings.
5. Your thumb should be pressing against the back of the guitar, so you can hold down the strings harder. When you fret a chord where the low E string (6th string) is not used (A major, D major for example), try moving your thumb over and slightly touching it, to mute the string. This will be handy when you strum these chords, since the string will be muted in case you strum it by accident.
6. While fretting any given chord, be sure not to bend any of the strings out of place. This would alter the pitch of the string, so your chord will sound wrong and your guitar will sound out of tune.
7. Once you can fret a chord with all of the strings ringing true, release the chord, shake your fingers, and try to place them back into the same position. Again, make sure all strings are ringing clearly. This will develop your hands muscle memory, and in time, your fingers will naturally form the shape of the chord.
8. Do the fret, shake-off, fret, shake-off technique 10 times per day with each chord you want to learn. You'll see that in a couple of weeks, you'll have the chord sounding perfectly all the time, with minimal effort.
9. At this stage of your guitar studies, you are not aiming for speed, rather accuracy.
10. Keep at it, don't get discouraged if you have a hard time with a chord. Remember that even the best guitarists were beginners at one time, everyone went through the learning process. It all gets easier and easier with every minute of practice you put into learning the chords.
11. And the last tip, cheesy, but very true part: Always remember to have fun. If it's not going well one day, give it a rest and try again the next day.