Basic Guitar Chords

First Basic Guitar Chord: Em - Eminor

Em (E minor) is the simplest chord. This is the first chord you should learn. Not only is it a wonderful chord, but it's easy. The small m after the E means minor.

Second Basic Guitar chord: C (major)

Second guitar chord you should learn is C. This is also a very simple chord but little bit difficult than the E minor chord. Please note that in this chord you only strum (ring/play) 5 strings. The string marked with X is not be be strummed.

Third Basic Guitar chord: G (major)

G major chord can be played as shown in the diagram above (3-2-0-0-0-4) or you can also play it in 2-1-0-0-0-3. First one is the recommended but most people use the second configuration.

Forth Basic Guitar chord: D (major)

At this stage you know 4 chords, G, C, D and Em. With only these 4 chords you can play more than thousands songs. The best songs to play for these songs is "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Country Roads" by John Denver.

Fifth Basic Guitar chord: Am - Aminor

The last chord for you to learn is Am (A minor chord). This is also very easy chord. Shifting chord from C to Am is very easy as these two have 2 fingers in common. Just move the third finger.

Practice Session
To practice these guitar chords use the image below:

What this means is that play each chord four time and then shift to next chord. Please note, when you are a learner, it is not important to strum very fast. What is important is that you are able to shift the chords smoothly. Hence keep your strumming pace low but constant. When you are able to move fingers easily from one chord to other then increase the pace of strumming.

Listen the above in midi format here

O.K. So thats all for basic guitar chords. When you are done with basic guitar chords you can move to more advanced guitar chords.