There was a legend that when ninjas were growing up they would plant a tree. Every day they would leap over that tree, and as it grew they’d increase their leap over time. Once it grew too high to jump over, then they’d plant another one and start over.
Great story, Mr Miyagi, but what does that have to do with learning the guitar?
[important]Write a small song to your progression. If you want help, copy a repeating piece of text from a poem, a Scripture or even a conversation. Don’t worry about it being stupid, just get started. This is for yourself. It’s just practice, so anything goes![/important]
Okay so you have the four main chords of G: G5, C2, Em7, and Dsus.
Experiment with different orders of chords. These are called progressions.
A couple examples of very common progressions to learn really well:
And now you can play most songs in G in the open chord form. Have fun.
Remember the last experiment? Now we get to add Em7 to the mix.
[important]The cool thing about this is that the 3rd and 4th fingers stay the same the whole time. All you gotta do is move the first and second fingers![/important]
Still playing old school E minor the way the books taught in the beginning? Why not spice it up a bit? You might just like it and never want to go back!
The tricky part is the mute. Just lightly touch the “x” with the first finger. This lets the bass note ring out. Play with the other chords and it’ll start making sense.
(Note: In the photo, the second finger is doing nothing. It’s just gonna chill for the moment.)
[important]Cool trick: Remember G5? If you play a G5 all you have to do is move the 2nd finger, and keep the rest the same. Wala: C2![/important]
Easy exercise:
Quick learning tip: Don’t worry about strum patterns or timing when trying to learn new chords. Too much on the brain at once! Work on that later…
Fun Chord Science Lessons are what some books call “theory”, but I can explain it without all the scary academic terms.
Do you know what a key is? For now we’ll call it a set of chords based on the starting and ending chord, the “home” chord. So if a song is in G, it usually starts and ends with a “G” and contains that set of chords.
Okay, next open chord in the key of G. That would be C2.
(The big “X” means don’t play that string. The big “O” on top means “open”. Play it. The more open strings we can get, the better!)
Start on the second lowest (the “A” string). Lightly touch the next string “D” to mute it so it thumps.
Let the rest ring out!
Working on a new series of open chords in the key of G.
G5 shouldn’t be too hard if you already know the regular G. After that we’ll get into the others in the set.
The “x” on the second lowest string means to mute it. Just lightly touch it with the first fingers so it thumps. That way the bass isn’t muddied and the chord becomes clearer.
Enjoy your chord!
