What Are Guitar Chords?
Guitar chords are individual notes on the guitar fretboard that are played together. The following diagram shows the C Major chord and the G Major chord. These diagrams are called chord charts.
How Do You Read A Chord Chart?
To read a guitar chord chart, you must understand the symbols that represent finger positions, open notes, dead notes, and fret numbers. The following are what the symbols mean:
Vertical Lines:
The 6 vertical lines represent the 6 strings on your guitar’s fingerboard.
Horizontal Lines:
The topmost horizontal line represents the nut and horizontal lines below it represent the frets on your guitar’s fingerboard.
Fret Position Symbols:
- 1 is your index finger. The same finger number 1 on two strings as in the 6th and 1st strings of the G Major chord above means that your index finger should extend across those two strings forming a barre for steadily holding two notes simultaneously.
- 2 is your middle finger.
- 3 is your ring finger.
- 4 is your little finger / pinkie.
- T is your thumb. The thumb is often used to “fret” the 6th string or help with deadening or muting it (See Dead Note Symbol).
Open Note Symbol:
O is the symbol for an open string which means that the entire string must ring out without being fretted. Make sure that none of your fingers are touching that string while you are playing the chord.
Dead Note Symbol:
X is the symbol for a dead note which means you must not let the string vibrate at all costs. In other words, you are muting the string to not hear any sound of a throughout the length of the string. You can deaden, or mute, the string by doing the opposite of what you do with an open string. You are free to strategically mute the string by slightly touching it with any part of your finger that can reach the string while still properly holding the chord.
You may have noticed that you don’t need to read notes or know music theory before you can strum your first guitar chord. Just looking at a chord chart, you already know where to put your fingers on the guitar fingerboard.
Next, you will need to train your fretting hand fingers on how to:
- Put enough pressure on the strings that need to be fretted.
- Keep your fingers off the strings that need to ring out.
- Knowingly mute strings that are labeled with an X symbol while letting the the guitar chord notes ring out freely.
