How to play a C Chord on Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Joe Wiles with the rock and roll conservatory on behalf of Expert Village. I'm going to teach you basically the first step of the CAGED Method. And that is learning your C chord. Basically, with a C chord you're only using five of your six strings. You're going to ignore your lowest E string, okay? For the C chord we ignore the low E string. We don't even play it. Some players hook their thumb over to mute it so they can strum all the strings and it dosen't ring out. That's what I do. Some people just don't even pluck it with their right hand. To form the C chord what you want to do is take your ring finger and put it on the third fret of the A string. Then you take your middle finger and put it on the second fret of the D string. And then you take your first finger, your index finger and put it on the first fret of the B string. From A string to the high E string your fret numbers would go three on the A string, two on the D string, the open G string, first fret on the B string, and then the open high E string. It should sound like this. Okay? Now, when you're practicing that if it's your first time learning this chord it might be really tricky to coordinate your fingers like that and if you're just beginning it might be really sore to have to push down the guitar that hard. I want you to work through that. You want each note, each of these five notes to ring out clearly and so that you can hear them. And then when you strum them all together it sounds like a C major chord. In the next segment we're going to talk about the next chord which is an A major chord. I'll see you there."