The topics covered in this tutorial: * Guitar chord charts and how to read them * Guitar chord fingering

If you want to learn how to play guitar chords, the first thing you need to do is learn how to decipherguitar chord charts.

A guitar chord chart is a list of chord diagrams. A chord diagram is a visual representation of a guitar chord.

Here's an example of a guitar chord diagram:

Let me explain to you how to read this guitar chord diagram:

You see six lines going from left to right and six lines going from top to bottom.

The lines going from top to bottom represent the guitar strings. The line most to the left represents the thickest string of the guitar (the low E string). The line most to the right represents the skinniest string of the guitar (the high E string).
The lines in between represent strings A, D, G and B.

The lines going from left to right represent the frets. The top line is the nut of the guitar (see picture above), the second line is the first fret, the third line the second fret, ...

The black dots on the guitar chord diagram represent the fingers.
A black dot means you have to place a finger there (between the two frets) and push the string down. The chart doesn't tell you which fingers you have to use, but most of the time it's obvious what finger goes where.

The white dots represent an open string. In our example above the white dots above string G and E mean that those strings have to be played open (so without fretting them).

Strings that don't have a black or a white dot are not played.

The C on top of the guitar chord chart represents the chord name. In our example it's the chord of C.

Let's look back at our example:

* the low E string has no dots, so it's not played * the A string has a dot above the 3rd fret (we say 'on the 3rd fret', but you place your finger behind the fret and not on it). So we put a finger on the 3rd fret * the D string is fingered at the 2nd fret * the G string is open * the B string is fretted at the 1st fret * the high E string is open
More information about chord names and how to construct chords you can read in the guitar chord theory tutorial. There's one more thing you need to know to be able to read guitar chord charts.
Have a look at the following example:

You see a 5 standing to the left of the guitar neck.
This means the first fret on the guitar chord chart is the actually the 5th fret on the guitar neck.

So in this example we play:

* no low E string * 5th fret on the A string * 7th fret on the D string * 7th fret on the G string * 6th fret on the B string * 5th fret on the high E string
This chord is actually a guitar bar chord.

One more thing we need to talk about is guitar chord fingering.
Like I told you above, it is most of the time obvious which fingering you use, but in some cases it's not.

Fingers are named as followed:

P.S. All guitar chord charts on this web site are free and printable, so you don't have to go online all the time to look up a chord. You can also download the guitar chord charts.
For printing place your mouse pointer on a guitar chord chart sheet, right click and select 'Print Picture...'.
For downloading place your mouse on a guitar chord chart, right click and select 'Save Picture As...'.

The best way to get these basic guitar chords in your fingers is by playing songs. Try to memorize the guitar chord chart as quickly as possible, but be patient with yourself because it takes some time until you can play the chords swiftly and with a clean sound.
These are some of the possible difficulties you can run into: * The chord doesn't sound clean. Some strings make a buzzing sound and some strings don't give any sound at all.

Possible solutions: * Your finger might be too far away from the fret or too close to it. * If a string doesn't sound you might be touching it with the flesh of an adjacent finger. Keep the finger nails of your left hand short. Your fingers should be almost 90 degrees against the fret board and long finger nails prevent you from doing this. * Try to apply more pressure * The transition between 2 chords goes very slow * That's normal for a beginner. Keep on practicing!
When learning songs, take out the chord changes you have trouble with and practice them a while on their own without bothering about the other chords. * Your fingers hurt * that's normal too. keep on going till your finger tops produce a layer of corn.
Give yourself some time, your hands need to adjust to the new task they've just been given.
What about the right hand?

A good question, as there's no avail in learning chords without producing any sound. There's two things you can do with your right hand (in terms of playing chords): strumming and finger picking.

1) Strumming
Strumming is a technique in which you play the notes of a guitar chord (almost) simultaneously by stroking the strings with a pick or with your finger.

Using your finger sounds the warmest in my opinion. Use the nail of you index finger to strum the strings. Support your index finger with your thumb.

A guitar pick produces a clear sound with a lot of treble in it. The hardness of the pick is important: a very hard pick can make your sound too harsh while a very soft pick produces a 'flappy' sound. A medium thickness gives the best results for strumming.

You can use a lot of different rhythms for strumming. Let me give you some basic examples of guitar strumming patterns:

Keep the strumming very simple in the beginning with this technique called four to the bar. Start counting from 1 to 4 and strum the chord on every count with a downstroke. A down stroke means you stroke from the thickest to the skinniest string with a pick or your finger. Make sure you play only the strings that are marked with a black or white dot (on the chord diagram). Failing to do this will make your chord sound bad.

In music notation it looks like this:

Rhythms are written between 2 vertical lines (bar lines):
| |
This is called a bar. Each bar has 4 counts.

: this is the symbol for a strum. Each strum like this has a duration of 1 count.

: the upward arrow tells you that the strum should go from the thickest to the skinniest string. This is called a downstroke.
Try this basic strumming pattern on some of the chords. If you succeed in doing this go to the next step:

Now we put an 'and' between the counts: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2... On the counts you strum with a downstroke (), on the 'and' you strum with an upstroke (: from the skinniest string to the thickest).

It looks like this: : this means that each strum has the duration of a half count. If a couple of these follow each other, the tail is connected: -in groups of 4: -or in groups of 2:

Here are a few more strumming patterns:

In this last example you see a curve between the 2nd and the 3rd count. This means that those 2 notes are played together, so the 2 half notes become a whole note.

Now start practicing these strumming patterns on some easy guitar songs.