In this beginner‑focused guitar lesson, Lauren Bateman explains why learning isolated chords isn’t enough and introduces the concept of chord progressions as the “recipe” that turns chords into songs. She presents four essential chords—G, E minor, C, and D—that all belong to the key of G, demonstrates finger placements for each, and shows how different ordering of these chords creates distinct musical feels. A simple four‑down‑stroke strumming pattern is taught, with emphasis on keeping the strumming hand moving even if chord changes sound rough. Bateman then plays a medley of six well‑known songs (e.g., “Wagon Wheel,” “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Country Roads,” “Sweet Home Alabama”) using only these four chords in various progressions, illustrating how a handful of chords can cover a large repertoire. Throughout, she targets absolute beginners, especially learners over 50, stressing that guitar enjoyment requires just four chords, a couple of basic strumming patterns, and minimal theory. She directs viewers to her free crash‑course on laurenbateman.com and a dedicated Sweet Home Alabama lesson for immediate song practice.
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So most beginners when learning guitar focus on learning a bunch of chords, but no one really tells them what to do with them. Okay, so you work really hard to get all of these chords sounding great, sounding perfectly awesome. Now what do we do with them? So today we're going to cover what a chord progression is, how chords are used in chord progressions, and how they apply to playing real music. All right, so by the end of this we're going to be learning songs like Wagon Wheel. Okay, Brown Eyed Girl, Country Roads, just to name a few. So stick around at the end because I'm going to show you how we can play all those songs by learning simple chord progressions. So let's start off with what is a chord progression. So a chord progression is a pattern of how we play songs. So think of it like you're working in the kitchen, like you have a recipe. Okay, so think of like the song is the recipe and the chords are the actual ingredients. All right? And we want to do them in a specific order, and by playing them in different orders, it's going to create a different feel, a different emotion. And that's the cool thing about what a chord progression is. And learning one chord progression just doesn't teach you one song. You can play many songs with the same chord progression because in music we are limited by the number of chords, okay? And the number of chords that sound good together, we call those keys in music. So a key is just a family of chords that sounds really good together. They, they're meant to go together, and we only have 12 keys in music, so we're kind of limited to the number of chord progressions we can have. So, but just by learning one doesn't mean you've learned one song. It actually means you can apply that chord progression to probably hundreds, if not thousands, of different songs. So think of a chord progression as the roadmap that connects the chords into the song. So what I'm going to do right now is quickly introduce you to the 4 chords that I teach my students in my 7-Level Guitar System. The reason we learned these 4 chords is because they belong to the same key and we can play lots and lots of songs with them. I am going to show you the full version of these chords. It's going to be a G chord, an E minor chord, a C chord, and a D chord. I do have simplified versions in my course, and if you're looking for like a quick primer, you can go to laurenbateman.com, check out my free crash course, and it goes over step by step in more detail how to play these chords, but I'm just going to run through them quickly. So right now we have a G chord, E minor, C, and D. Let's start with the E minor because that's the easiest one, requires 2 fingers— my first finger and my second finger. Okay, if you don't know, these spaces are called frets on the guitar, and we have different strings. We have the E string, A, uh, D string, G, B, E. Okay, those are the names of the strings. Frets 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. Okay, E chord, first and second fingers. The first finger is going to go on the A string, second fret. The second finger is going to go right below it on the D string, second fret. Okay, that is an E minor chord. Okay, the next chord, the easy way to swing into it is leave your second finger in place, put your third finger up on the third fret of the A string. Okay, and then your first finger comes down to the first fret on the B string. This is a C chord. Okay, if we go back to our E minor Leave the first finger in place. Now move the second finger up to the third fret on the top string and use either your third finger or your pinky on the bottom. Because of my hand shape, I do prefer the third finger, but some people, particularly those with larger hands, they sometimes prefer the pinky. It doesn't change the sound at all. Okay, so I'm gonna go here, G chord, third finger. Okay, lift the other 2 up, move the 3rd finger up to the 3rd fret on the B string. All right, this is going to start our D chord. We have the 2nd finger on the bottom string at the 2nd fret, and our 1st finger is going to be on the G string, 2nd fret. Okay, so this is going to be a D chord. The easiest way to practice that if you're new to guitar— this is what I teach people in my course— is take the 1st and 2nd fingers and move those down first, put those in place, and then add the 3rd finger in at the end. So those are the 4 chords we're going to use, and like I said, they all belong to a special called the key of G. And the magic of this is that these chords sound really good together, okay? And you can play them in all kinds of different orders, which I'm going to show you shortly, but they sound good together and it allows you to play lots of songs. But before we get into building the actual chord progressions and showing you some examples, I just want to quickly introduce myself. I'm Lauren Bateman and I specialize in helping absolute beginners learn how to play guitar. I really specifically help students over the age of 50, uh, learn to have fun with their guitar and kind of check off their bucket list. So hopefully if this is your bucket list item, happy to have you here, happy to help you. Let's get into our first chord progression. It's going to be G, E minor, C, D. So we would play a G chord followed by an E minor chord, a C chord, and then a D chord. Already sounds like a song. So now all we have to do is we have to put a strumming pattern over it. The simplest strumming pattern to do It's just 4 downstrums. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. Again, starting to sound like a song. 1, 2, 3, 4 to E minor.
To C. To D. To E. Okay?
And this is a really great chord progression because So this D chord is a very, very tense chord. And when you hit that G chord, it sounds like almost like you're done. It's a very, very nice sound, nice transition. So I'm gonna show you another chord progression, same chords, just a slightly different order. Let's see if you can hear any differences here. Kind of has like— it's the same chords, but it has like a kind of slightly darker feel to it because we go G, D, E minor, C. So it feels a little bit different from our first one. Let's try a third one now. We're gonna go G, C, D, E minor. Let's see how this one sounds. That's a Another chord progression, another different feel, same 4 chords. So you can see by just taking these 4 chords, putting them in different orders, you can actually play lots and lots of songs with different feels to them, okay? So you can see how this is kinda like the framework and the building block of songs. Now some songs will use just 1 chord progression for the entire song. So I think of a song like Marshall Tucker Band, which I think also uses these chords. It's the same 4 chords, over and over the entire song, which makes life really, really easy for you, especially if you're a beginner. I do have a lesson on that. I'll put a card up here if you want to go check that out. Uh, but also the other thing is that songs will sometimes use one or two different chord progressions. More complex songs might use more, but a lot of kind of like the beginner easy songs use one or two chord progressions, usually one chord progression in the verse and a different chord progression in the chorus. Okay, so by doing that, you can build a really kind of intricate, intricate song, but you know the building blocks and the framework. So now you can apply this to any of the songs you want to learn, which I guess begs the question, how do you know what order to play the song in? And in music, we have something that is called either a chord chart or a sheet where you would look up the music, and that will tell you the order to play things on. So if you go to my website, laurenbateman.com, I have a number of different songs there, and you can see the orders. Okay, so basically you'd have to get some sheet music to tell you, or if you, you get really good down the road and you develop your ear, you'll be able to figure out the chord progression yourself by just listening to the music. But your job right now is just to learn those 4 chords and then follow the map that's given to you. Now before I go and play the medley of songs I've put together here, a medley I think of 6 different songs all using these 4 chords, I'm going to show you back to back how you can play them. But first, Let's just take a little bit of playing this chord progression. So we're going to go G, E minor, C, D, and we're going to do 4 strums. And the key thing I want you to remember is that your strumming hand never stops when we're trying to play through these chords and chord progression. So if your chords sound horrible and messy, don't worry about it. The key right now is to keep the strumming going. Okay, so we're just going to go nice and slow. 1, 2, 3, 4. Here we go. 1 2! 3—4... One-two-three-four-and one-two-three-four—one-two-three-four-one-two-three-four—and onetwothreefouronetabletwofourone-twotree-foursontwotreefore-onesutreforesoundandvideo.com on your own without me counting. Ready? The G, E minor, C, D. One more time. Ready? G, E minor, C, and D. Okay, with that, I'm going to show you a medley of 6 different songs that I've put together here using only these 4 chords. Okay, now when you're learning songs, keep the strumming simple the way I just showed you. I'm gonna play a little bit more, um, whatever comes out. So as you get better at the guitar and at, you know, listening and playing music, you're gonna play with whatever you feel. All right, so I'm just gonna play whatever I feel, so the strumming might be a little bit more intricate, but Don't let that throw you off. What's important is just watch me, watch the chords. It's going to be the same 4 chords, but I'm going to play 6 different songs back to back. Let's get started. Here we go. 1, 2, 1, 2, here we go.
Rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel. Rock me, mama, any way you feel. Hey, hey, mama, rock me. In the misty morning fog with our hearts thumping. And you, my brown-eyed girl. You, my brown-eyed girl. Country road, take me home. To the place where I belong. It's in your head, in your head. Zambé, zambé, zambé. Eh, eh, what if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us. Sweet Home Alabama, where the skies are so blue. So did you notice something?
It was like I played 6 songs, okay, same 4 chords, sometimes in different orders. Sometimes the chords were played for a short amount of time, sometimes they were played for a longer amount of time. So it just goes to show you, really, with 4 chords how much you can do on the guitar by just learning some chords and knowing simple chord progressions. So I hope this proves something to you, that guitar doesn't have to be overwhelming, right? You don't need 50 different chords, you don't need a million different strumming patterns, you don't need a ton of music theory or advanced techniques to start having fun with the instrument. What you need right now as a beginner is you need 4 chords, a couple simple strumming patterns, and just applying that to songs that you know and love. Now, if you want to take these chords and start immediately playing a song, I highly recommend you go check out my beginner Sweet Home Alabama lesson over there, where you only actually need 3 of these chords. You need the G chord, the C chord, and the D chord. I'm going to show you step by step how to play that. Go check that out right now.
