Hi!
Today we need to get those chords down pat so you can play the song. Whether you learn a song from tab, from someone else or once you get good enough to transcribe them yourself, you usually want to start by looking at the chord structure of the song.
Chords are a group of 3 or more notes played together, or in the case of power chords you can achieve the right kind of sound with just two notes. A single note for example could be an E when you hit the top string of your Guitar.
You will have heard about different types of chords: major, minor, seventh etc... We won't worry too much about the names of the chords and where they come from in this lesson, I just want you to concentrate on being able to play each of these chords without any dead notes.
The chords are: E minor, G add 9, C add 9 and D.
Make sure you've downloaded the PDF on Basic Guitar Chords so you know how to read these Chord Charts
E minor
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This is on a clean electric guitar, no effects. Obviously your acoustic will produce a different timbre of sound but the underlying chord will sound the same.
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If yours doesn't sound like that then you may be hitting some 'dead notes'.
Dead notes are when part of your finger is touching other strings that it shouldn't be, and those strings aren't ringing out as loud and clear as the others. Take a look at your fingers and notice if they are accidentally touching the other strings, try and maneuver them so that they are only pressing down on the strings that you want. In this case the D and A string.
The other reason it might not sound quite right is because your guitar is out of tune, if you have a guitar tuner then now might be a good time to pull it out and make sure you're in tune and ready to play, if you don't have a guitar tuner yet, that's ok, just download the report How to Tune Your Guitar and you'll be away laughing.
Practice playing the E minor chord a few times before moving onto the next chord. The first time you play a chord it can be really hard on your fingers, but perseverance is the key!
G Add 9
The Chord Chart for G Add 9, notice how we are adding a different note to the G Major Chord from the Basic Guitar Chords... I'll talk a bit about the theory in another lesson, for now here's the chart and what it should sound like:
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This is on a clean electric guitar, no effects. Obviously your acoustic, or electric will produce a different sound depending on the room you're playing in, and any effects you're running the guitar through.
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C Add 9
Luck for you this is really similar to the G Add 9:
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Keep practicing this one, it's a hard one to get your fingers to.
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One thing you'll notice is that you only need to move your first two fingers from the G-Add-9 to form the C-Add-9. Do you remember my lesson on the 10 Most Common Mistakes people make when Learning Guitar Chords? I wrote about it on the blog, you can read the full article here:
Learning Guitar Chords, Top 10 Mistakes
In it you'll learn that one of the biggest mistakes people make is not thinking about the least number of changes they need to make to get to the next chord.
D
You should have already practiced this as part of the Basic Guitar Chords, if you haven't quite got this one down here's a quick refresher:
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This one is nice and easy.
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See you tomorrow!
Keep an eye out for an email from me tomorrow with your next lesson, make sure you try and practice today's lesson 3 times before tomorrow. By practicing on 3 separate occasions you increase your chances of memory retention and it also gives your brain a chance to integrate these chords into your muscle memory.
Ideally you'll want to practice it once now, once again in a couple of hours (after doing something completely different to give your brain a rest) and then again tomorrow. While you are sleeping tonight your subconscious will be processing everything you've done today, and it will see that these 4 new chords have been repeated and will work to internalize them.
Over time this works to build your muscle memory so you get to the stage of forming these chord shapes without even thinking about it, it's one of those amazing feelings when you finally "get it"
Persevere!
Adam Summers,
InstantGuitarist.com