Hi, my name is Derek Tarnow. I've been playing guitar for twelve years, and I teach and perform. In this segment I'm going to discuss basic guitar chords. First, we have to define what a basic guitar chord is. I tend to think of them as being easy, something you teach a, like, a complete beginner in maybe the first or second lesson. And, something that's relatively common. So, the most basic guitar chords are like three string chords. Which is generally what you'd start a very young beginner on. Like an elementary age student, a late elementary age student, to like, maybe a young girl, middle school student. Depending on just how their, their muscles develop. Because a lot of times if you're, like a younger student, you know, you're, it's, it's really difficult for you to reach your, all your fingers, all the way around the neck of the guitar, and to have any kind of control over what your hand's doing there. But anyway, the first chord that a, usually a student will learn, is C. So, to play that, just with the three, three notes, it's the top three notes of the guitar. So this is a G, this is a C, it's played on the B string, and this is an E. And that's a very beginning way to play a C. The next chord will be G. So, this is just a G and a B, and another G. So, you might notice that there's only two different notes on that chord, whereas the C, there are three. And, that's because it's not a complete chord. We're leaving out what's known as a fifth of the chord. But, if you stick with guitar, past basic guitar chords, you'll learn more, what that means. The, the first major hurdle for a student to get over, when they're learning how to play a guitar, is learning to switch chords and time. And, this is really difficult, because you're, you're doing a lot of things at once. You have your right hand strumming, and playing the time. You have your left hand, switching between all six strings and time, too. And, the timing isn't, you know, you know, just exact. There's a little bit of feel that you have to develop, to learn how to do. Well, a good way to start developing these skills is to start with the really easy chords, like I just showed you, the C and the G. So, you'd play like, and that's like, not something that's terribly difficult to do. The next step, after that, are, or you can start with a step if you're a little bit older student, or just get the knack of it, or you know, people, people learn at different speeds. If you already have some guitar experience, and you're just trying to learn guitar chords, this might be a better place for you to start. Playing the C like this. And then when you play the C, you don't play the low E string, you just play the C note, which is the third fret of the A string. Which is also the, written out as middle C on guitar. And you just would strum all five strings of that. And then you'd switch to G this way. And, on the G chord you play all six strings. And then, you could learn how to switch strings. Some other basic guitar chords are E, just played with all six strings. A, just played with only the top five strings. The D, which is only with all the top four strings. Some other basic chords are, A minor, E minor, and some not so basic chords, but still, still basic with the D minor. Just played with the top four strings, and F, which is probably the most difficult of the basic guitar chords. Any way, with time and a little bit of practice and effort, you'll be able to learn basic guitar chords. And, just stick with it, don't let it get too frustrating.
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