On the other hand some guitarists specialise in playing melody or single string notes usually played directly from the written sheet music, while this is the best option to clearly state the melody unless there is a rhythm guitar accompaniment the performance can be quite empty and dull.

The third option is to combine both the melody and rhythm parts of a composition into a solo guitar chord – melody style, whereby the guitarist plays all the parts of the composition without any need of other musicians to present a satisfactory performance.

Although this sounds complicated (or impossible) it’s really quite easy once you understand the concept, here are three tips to get you started in this style of playing.

Tip 1: Learn to play the single note melody, take great care to learn the melody correctly, if you can read standard sheet music it is a good idea to learn the melody exactly as it is stated in the written score; you can always embellish the melody later, the trick is to make certain you are playing the correct melody before you start improvising on the it.

Tip 2 : Play the melody an octave higher than the written piano score. Most guitarists don’t realise that the guitar sounds one octave lower than written; therefore in order for the melody to ‘cut through’ and not get tangled up with the chords it’s essential that you play the melody one octave higher, playing on the first or second strings will give you the best results.

Tip 3: Strum the chord on the first beat of each bar making certain the melody note is the highest note of the chord, in most instances the melody will be a note that already exists in the chord the trick is to make sure that the melody note is not lost amongst the other chord notes; sometimes you may have to slightly alter the chord shape to accommodate a melody note that is not contained in the chord.

Take your time working on only four to six melody notes at a time, aim for precision and make sure to really bring the melody out in your playing, like everything it takes practice, patience and perseverance but the result is well worth the effort.

But what if there was another way to learn and instantly recall songs and information you have already practised? The great news is there is … the trick is to learn via connected learning, whereby new information is related to information you already know.

Here’s how to apply connected learning to your guitar playing:

Step 1: Study popular chord progressions – instead of learning random chords study which chords work together e.g., the G – Em – C – D chord progression has been a popular chord sequence for many years, hundreds of hit songs have been based on this progression

Step 2: Learn via chord templates – once you find a chord progression you like keep your eyes and ears peeled for this chord progression in the music you are listening to. Check out how different songwriters use variations of this progression.

Here are some common chord progression templates for the G – Em – C – D progression.

(a) G /// | Em /// | C /// | D /// ||

(b) G /// | G /// | Em /// | Em /// | C /// | C /// | D /// |D /// ||

(c) G /// | G /// | Em /// | Em /// | C /// | D /// | G /// |G /// ||

Step 3: Apply these templates to Songs: As you play songs look for the similarities in the chord progressions, you will be amazed how many songs have the exact same chord progression.

Songs like … Every Day (Buddy Holly); Teardrops on My Guitar (Taylor Swift); and This Kiss (Faith Hill) and many more are all based on the G – Em – C – D progression.

Now I’m not talking about some weasel way of playing the guitar that is musically incorrect, in fact nothing could be further from the truth; when you approach chord playing on the guitar the way I’m going to show you in this article you will be utilising all the best musical voice leading techniques that top arrangers use for vocals, strings and keyboards.

Let’s begin …

G / / / | Gmaj7 / / / | G6 / / / | G Maj7 / / / ||

A chord progression like this can send all but the very best players into a tailspin buzzing all over the guitar fingerboard like a bee in a bottle.

Simple Guitar Chords Step 1: Identify the notes in each chord

G = G – B – D

G Maj 7 = G – B – D – F#

G6 = G – B – D – E

Simple Guitar Chords Step 2: Look for the common notes

In this chord progression the notes G – B – D are common to all three chords,the idea is to keep the common notes of each chord in the same position on the guitar fretboard only changing the fingering slightly to accommodate the moving note(s).

Simple Guitar Chords Step 3: Use the least amount of movement when designing your new chord shapes.

Here is one solution to the chord progression.

G / / / | Gmaj7 / / / | G6 / / / | G Maj7 / / / ||

G
–3-
–0-
–0-
–0-
–x-
–x-

GMaj7
–2-
–0-
–0-
–0-
–x-
–x-

G6
–0-
–0-
–0-
–0-
–x-
–x-

As you can see, as well as being musically correct these chords are extremely easy to play.

Take the subject of playing chords on the guitar, now there’s a hairy subject! Simply thrashing away aimlessly day after day hoping for a better result tomorrow really does not work … you probably know that by now.

But what if there was a better way to approach learning and playing chords with accuracy on the guitar, well the great news is there are many ways to tackle chords, here are three essential skills to acquire that are guaranteed to turbo charge your chord playing.

My first step is to slow everything down and take a detailed look at the skills required for playing chords competently.

Upon close examination the process of playing chords on the guitar with precession and accuracy can be easily divided into three stages: 1. Finger stamp movement; 2. Finger co-ordination; and 3. Data memory recall.

1. Finger stamp movement – take a close look at how your right hand fingers come down on any chord shape, there should only be a single movement, not many separate movements; your fingers must all come down on the chord shape like a rubber stamp. Check out how you play a ‘C’ major chord, examine it closely … does each finger land on the string in one simultaneous movement?

2. Co-ordination exercise – In order to achieve the ‘finger stamp’ movement we really need some finger coordination exercises … a simple but effective warm up exercise to co-ordination your left hand fingers is: 1st finger, 1st fret: 2nd finger, 2nd fret; 3rd finger, 3rd fret and 4th finger, 4th fret.

The idea is to play this exercise s-l-o-w-l-y making certain you hold all fingers down on the string after each note is played, by the time you have played the last note you should have all four fingers held down on the string.

If you find this exercise too difficult to play in the first fret region simply play the same exact exercise beginning on a higher fret, usually beginning around the 5th or 7th fret works well for most players.

3.Data memory recall system – the idea is to draw the chord shape you want to remember on one side of a card without it’s name, on the other side of the card write the name of the chord. The concept is to associate the name of the chord with the chord shape, as you learn a new chord add it to you ‘question and answer’ data card system.

The problem for the newbie guitarist is how to get your fingers around those difficult chord shapes. My own personal experience trying to learn chords was quite terrifying, when I showed up for my first guitar lesson I was confronted with a giant chord book containing 1,001 chord shapes; I recall thinking to myself “I’ll never be able to play all these chords”, and as it turns out I now know that guitar players don’t learn effectively that way.

The trick is not how many chords you know but rather, which chords sound good together and how easy the chord shapes are to play.

Here is a list of chords you should learn on the guitar, I’ve listed them in chord families so you can practice them together, that way your musical ‘ear’ will develop quickly and you will soon recognise these chords in popular songs.

Guitar friendly chords:

Key of G – G, C & D

Key of D – D, G & A

Key of A – A, D & E

If you learn these chords you will be off to a great start playing the guitar and just to show you that guitar chords don’t have to be physically difficult to play here are a few easy chord shapes to practice.

G
–3-
–0-
–0-
–0-
–x-
–x-

C
–0-
–1-
–0-
–x-
–x-
–x-

But what if there was another way to approach learning chords on the guitar … well there are many different ways you can learn the guitar; here is just three of those alternatives.

Tip #1 : Learn easy chord shapes using the minimum number of fingers – all chord shapes can be reduced to three string versions, these are the best shapes to learn to play first, if you are not wrestling with physically demanding chord shapes you will be able to concentrate on developing your beat.

Tip #2 : Learn via chord progressions – The trick with guitar playing is to know which chords work together to create chord progressions; it’s far better to know one standard chord progression with three chords that will enable you to play hundreds of songs than learning fifty random chords.

Remember the whole idea is to play music, and the best way to play music is to learn songs and the ideal way to learn songs is via chord progressions.

Tip #3 : Learn chord progression templates : Popular songs follow organized musical harmonic structures, we like songs for certain reasons, and one of those reasons is because they sound familiar, there is something about them that makes us feel comfortable; we feel as if we have heard them before somewhere, somehow; that’s because many songs use the exact same harmonic background, only the melody is changed.

By learning to recognize and mentally pigeon hole songs it makes it easy to instantly recall material you have previously learned.

The routine went like this … almost very week my instructor
would say “one day you will be ready to begin learning bar
chords”. This went on lesson after lesson, I figured I needed to
practice a whole lot more in order to be worthy of learning these
chords, there seemed to be an almost religious significance about
this particular aspect of guitar playing.

Long story short, when the day finally come (I had given up hope
of ever qualifying to play bar chords by this time) it was one of
the biggest let downs of my life; the chords were physically
difficult to play and sounded quite boring and flat compared to
the open chords I could already play, but most of all the shapes
were very confusing and hard to remember.

By now you are probably thinking, what’s the point of learning
them anyway they seem like more trouble than they are worth; good
point … as time went by I did make a few important discoveries
about learning and playing bar chords, here’s a few tips that
will make learning them a whole lot easier.

How to learn bar chords the easy way!

1. guitar set up - first things first; make certain to have your
guitar’s action (distance between the strings and the fretboard)
adjusted by a competent repair person. This one thing alone will
make bar chords so much easier to play.

Choice of string gauge also plays a large part in playability and
getting a good sound; I recommend using medium gauge strings.

For acoustic guitars:

1st = .012
2nd = .016
3rd = .024
4th = .032
5th = .042
6th = .053

For electric guitar:

1st = .009
2nd = .011
3rd = .016
4th = .024
5th = .032
6th = .042

BTW – knowing which string gauge you want for your guitar will
help the repair person set the guitar up for optimum performance.

2. Use the keynote system - I recommend using the keynote system
for learning and recalling your chord names.

There are two main types of bar chords commonly used by
guitarists (there are many types of chords played with a bar)
however the ‘E’ shape and ‘A’ shape bar chords are the most
frequently used by the majority of players.

The “E” shape chords take their name from the first and sixth
strings.

The trick is to know the names of the notes on either string;
luckily for us the names of the notes on both strings are exactly
the same!

Most players prefer working off the sixth string so here are the
names of the notes on the sixth string. (numbers on the left hand
side refer to the frets, letters refer to the names of the
notes).

0 = E

1 = F

2 = F#/Gb

3 = G

4 = G#/Ab

5 = A

6 = A#/Bb

7 = B

8 = C

9 = C#/Db

10 = D

11 = D#/Eb

12 = E

3. ‘E’ shape chords – The trick with remembering bar chords is to
relate the ‘new’ chords to something you already know, that way
you will be learning in a connected way.

Practice playing your ‘E’ major, ‘E’ minor and ‘E’ dominant
seventh chords without using your first finger. Simply replace
your first finger with your second finger, your second finger
with your third and your third with your fourth.

I’ve marked the fingers in brackets() next to their respective
strings in the chord shapes below.

E (major)

-0-
-0-
-1-(2)
-2-(4)
-2-(3)
-0-

Em (minor)

-0-
-0-
-0-
-2-(4)
-2-(3)
-0-

E7 (dominant seventh)

-0-
-0-
-1-(2)
-0-
-2-(3)
-0-

The reason for doing this is to get used to playing the chord
formations with the fingers that will be used in the bar chord
shapes, once you are competent with playing these chords using
the new fingering start moving these shapes around the guitar
fretboard.

The first finger with cover (bar) all six strings for each chord
and the chord will take it’s name from the sixth or first
string.

Summary: An ‘E’ major shape moved to the third fret will produce
a ‘G’ major chord; an ‘Em’ minor shape moved to the third fret
will produce a ‘G’ minor chord.

Fortunately, most would-be guitarists give up their guitar
playing adventures within a few short weeks (days for some), I
say fortunately because they have been saved from the frustration
and aggravation of learning to play guitar via the random chord
system.

But what of the dedicated guitarist who dares to trod the
“musical road less traveled?” How do these brave fledgling
musicians learn to play music and master the guitar fretboard?

After thirty-five years of professional teaching I can honestly
report that out of 100 newbie guitarists only 2% ever learn how
to unlock the fretboard and understand how to apply the
fundamentals of music to their chosen instrument.

Music is an endless journey, even the very best musicians have
only scratched the surface of what is possible; there are
countless harmonic options in music which equates to
thousands of chord shapes on the guitar; how do you ever learn
all this stuff?

The good news is you don’t have to know all the chords in a chord
book to play music, if fact most of that information will not
help you at all it will only serve to confuse you even more.
There are many easy common sense ways to approach learning the
guitar here is just one of the simple ways to learn chords.

Each key has seven chords that are created by stacking the notes
of that scale on top of each other in thirds. It could be said
that these seven chords are the ‘children’ of the scale.

Here is an example in the key of C major.

C Major scale: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C

The seven chords created from the C major scale:

C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am – Bdim

Learning random chords is simply that …. random!

The most important thing to remember about learning chords is
that it does not matter how many chords you know, it’s the
knowledge of which chords go together that will enable you to
play songs.

Tip 1: 99% of two chord songs use the 1st and 5th chords of a
key.

Tip 2: 90% of three chord songs use the 1st, 4th and 5th chords
of a key.

Tip 3: In a three chord song; if you are trying to decide whether
the chord progression of a song moves from chord one to chord
four or chord five use the following examples to help you decide.

Chord 1 moving to a chord 5 the sound drops down (chord 5 has a
heavier musical weight or density than chord one.)

Chord 1 moving to a chord 4 the sound goes up (chord 4 has less
musical weight or density than chord 1.)

Summary: Learn the 1 – 4 – 5 chords in the most popular guitar
friendly keys e.g., keys of G, D, A and E and you will be well on
your way to playing many songs by ear.

Have ever wondered if you were really cut-out to play guitar,
after all the guy’s and gal’s on the videos seem to make it look
so easy!

Despite our best intentions the reality of guitar playing really
hits home once we get our guitar out of it’s case; there’s sore
fingers, impossible chord shapes and nothing seems to sound
anything like remotely like music.

But what if there was an easy way to play chords on the guitar,
well the good news is there are many ways to play easy chord
shapes on the guitar here are just a few to get you started!

Here is a sample of a few “one finger” chords:

G
-3–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-x–
-x–

G7
-1–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-x–
-x–

Gm
-3–
-3–
-3–
-x–
-x–
-x–

“One finger” chords, I can’t possibly get any easier than that
can it? How about a “no finger” chord!

Em
-0–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-x–
-x–

No kidding, that is a correct E minor chord without using any
fingers.

Moving right along …

Another set of popular chords that turn up often in songs are “E”
chords, here are a few “one fingered”, “E” chords for you to
try.

Em7
-0–
-0–
-0–
-0–
-2–
-0–

E7
-0–
-0–
-1–
-0–
-x–
-x–

E
-0–
-0–
-1–
-x–
-x–
-x–

You can make any difficult chord shape easy to play once you
understand which individual notes make up a particular chord,
e.g., a “C” chord is usually quite difficult to play especially
for newbie players, here is a simple one-finger version for you
to try.

C
-0–
-1–
-0–
-x–
-x–
-x–

Now, it’s time you to expand your chord vocabulary how about some
two fingered chords

Em
-0–
-0–
-0–
-2–
-2–
-0–

D69/F#
-0–
-0–
-2–
-0–
-x–
-2–

Don’t be put off by the complex chord name “D69/F#” this chord is
really simple to play and works well with the “Em” chord, in fact
these two chords are all you need to play the song “Horse With No
Name” by the group America.

Horse With No Name

Em /// | D69/F# /// |

Next I’ve included a couple of two finger variations of popular
chords for you to try.

C
-0–
-1–
-0–
-2–
-x–
-x–

D6
-2–
-0–
-2–
-0–
-x–
-x–

The “D6″ makes for a good substitution for the standard “D”
chord.

Summary: Chords are like musical words, once you learn how to
spell a chord you will discover many new (and easy) ways of
playing that chord on the guitar.

I know from my own early experiences trying to play the guitar
that one of the biggest stumbling blocks is trying to cope with
difficult chord shapes; just recently I though I’d do some
research to see if anything had changed over the past ten years,
surely with all the new advancements in technology and the
ability to instantly access information worldwide things should
have advanced in guitar instruction!

Well, long story short … it hasn’t, “easy” guitar methods are
just as hard as ever with the only change I can report is there’s
a lot more of them!

Here’s the musical facts of life to get you off to the best
possible start with your guitar playing:

1. A guitarist must first learn to develop their beat … it does
not matter how many chords a guitarist knows if they can’t feel
the rhythm and develop their groove.

2. Guitarists can NEVER develop their sense of rhythm while
struggling with difficult chord shapes.

3. People respond to music in this order (a) rhythm; then (b)
melody and lastly (c) harmony.

Notice how rhythm is first in the list!

O.K., how do we overcome this issue of difficult chord shapes,
the good news is there are many ways to play easy chord shapes on
the guitar; here are just a few to get you started.

G
-3–
-0–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-x–

Em
-0–
-0–
-0–
-2–
-2–
-0–

C
-0–
-1–
-0–
-x–
-x–
-x–

D
-2–
-3–
-2–
-0–
-x–
-x–

Learning how to play these chord shapes will allow you to play
many songs.

Concept 1: The idea is to learn easy chord shapes so you can
concentrate on your beat.

Concept 2: Once you have master these shapes practice them in
common chord sequences called ‘chord progressions’.

Concept 3: Apply these chord progressions to songs.

Here is an example of a common chord progression using these
simple shapes.

G /// | Em /// | C /// | D /// |

The song “Last Kiss” by Pearl Jam has this exact same
progression throughout the entire song.

Summary: The trick with learning easy chord shapes on guitar is
to know how each chord is spelt, every chord has it’s own unique
spelling, once you know the names of the notes that make up a
particular chord you can design or re-design a chord shape to
suit your fingers.