Shortcut to Learning Guitar Chords Part-2

I hate to tell you this, but you'd need to memorize a little bit. Yes, just a little bit. A little bit of simple concepts that will progress as we go along. Please don't cringe, like "cringe in horror". Please accept that remembering something is part of learning. I assure you though that I will not flood you with a technical detail used in formal music education. I'll make it as simple as possible free of technical jargons, except when there's really no choice. I will use my own terminology that may make things clearer. To seasoned musicians there, please don't flame me.

Let's start.

CONCEPT 1

There are 7 basic guitar chords. They are A,B,C,D,E,F,G. ( You may see some write it as C,D,E,F,G,A,B. Why? It has something to do with what musicians call "12 equal temperament" tuning system, and C being the reference "cent". As I promised, I'm not to flood you with technical details so let me stop here. You can forget about this, just remember the chords "loops back", see Concept #2. But if you really want to mess your head up, read this entry in the Wikipedia.)

The chords "loop back". What follows after G is A, what precedes A is G. Imagine like ABCDEFGABCDEFGABCDEFG, endless. You can fill your wall with it and you can't change it.



CONCEPT 2

You only need to remember A or E, and you can derive all chords of ABCDEFG. Use A, you can derive BCDEFG; use E, you can derive FGABCD. Hurray!

Here is the A-chord:

And here is the E-chord:

Here's how to do them:

A-chord:

The E-chord:




CONCEPT 3

I expect you to have understood the fretboard now. You have to. And I need you to agree that when I say "move up", it means moving closer to the guitar body; and "move down" means moving closer to the headstock. Clear? UP: move closer to guitar body; DOWN: move closer to headstock. Move what? Finger positions. Just remember what's UP and DOWN means for now.

We also need to agree at what extent you need to move up or down. "1 step" would mean "1-fret".