4 EASIEST Absolute Beginner Guitar Chords To Play REAL Songs

Hello, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here with a very important lesson video on the first four chords you should learn as a beginner. Now, these are simplified chords that I teach my students to help us getting playing music as fast as possible. And you're going to find with just these four chords, you'll be able to play thousands of songs.

Now, this is an updated HD version of an older video of mine, but I'm going to make this even simpler for you. So basically what we're going to do is we're going to go over four simple chords that I teach my students and their first or second lesson as guitar students. And we use these four chords to play lots of songs, such as Heart of Gold, Think of Zombie by the Cranberries, Perfect by Ed Sheeran. I mean, there's lots and lots of songs and you'll find a list of those on my website. Put a link below where you can go and find those songs. So the caveat to this is I'm going to show you four chords. I'm actually going to make one of them even easier than my last video. And if you stay tuned through the end of this video, I'm going to show you how you can use a capo to actually access even more songs with just these four chords. So let's get into the actual chords. So the first chord we're going to learn is probably one of the easiest. It's an E minor chord. And we're going to build all of our chords on off of this chord. So it's very important that we get familiar with this one and know it very well. Alright, so what we're going to do is we're going to. We need two fingers, all right? Our first finger and our second finger. And our first finger is going to go to the top string of the guitar, alright? On the second fret. So these blocks are called frets. So you're going to count up 1, 2 frets. Put your first finger on the top string and then lower it to the fifth string. And then what we're going to do with our second string is just put it right below that first finger. If you strum all six strings, we call this an E minor chord. It's a sad chord, that's why it's minor. All right, so let's find that again. So we're going to go to the second fret, all right? Get your first finger, move it down to the fifth string, second fret, and then we're going to put our second finger right below it on the Second fret, and that is E minor. All right, I'm going to repeat that one more time. This E beginner lesson video. So I'm going to teach this as if you were a student in my classroom. So we're going to repeat things a few times. So if you feel like you've gotten enough out of it, feel free to fast forward and go to the next section. But I'm going to repeat it a few more times just so that you can find it. First finger. All right. Fifth string, count up to the second fret and put your second finger right below on the fourth string. Second fret. And we're going to strum all the chords. This is your E minor chord. And this is going to be the foundation for all the other chords that we're going to learn. So let's go learn our second chord. So the second chord I'm going to show you is a simplified C chord. It's only two fingers. The normal C chord is usually three fingers. But the reason I teach this way is because for a lot of students, especially absolute beginners or older students, moving three fingers is very difficult. So we take this approach and most of my students find it much easier. So we're gonna find that E minor chord again. So just one more time. First finger on the fifth fret. Sorry. Fifth string, go to the second fret. Put that second finger right below. Okay. And I will do some close ups after I show you this C chord. What we're gonna do is we have a pivot point here. Alright? So our second finger is going to stay put. The only thing we're gonna do is maybe slide it back a little in the fret. Okay? So we're gonna lift up our finger, slide this finger back a little bit to give us space so we don't have to stretch so much. And this first finger is now going to come down to the second string. First fret. Okay? So this is our C chord. And we're going to try as best as possible to just hit the bottom four strings. So now to get back to E minor, we lift up the first finger. Just slide this second finger forward a little bit. Put the first finger right back on top on the second fret of the fifth string. Okay, let's do that again. We're gonna lift up our first finger, slide the second finger back a little bit. First finger comes down. Second string, first fret.

And that's your C chord. One more time. Okay, first finger up to the fifth string. Second fret. We have E minor. And then first finger back down to the second string. On the first fret we have a C chord. Alright, so I'm going to go in for close up just so that you guys can see my fingers moving on this. If you guys have liked what I've showed you so far, make sure to subscribe to my channel because I really specialize in lessons for beginners so that you can see when I release new content, songs and tips. Let's get back into the lesson. All right, here we are for a close up. This is my guitar neck. This is the headstock of the guitar. And we have frets 1, 2 and 3. So we're going to find that E minor, first, fifth string. Okay, second fret. And then the second finger is going to go right below on the fourth string. Okay, if you play all six strings, that is an E minor chord. Now to get to that C chord, we're going to lift up the first finger. We're gonna slide the second finger towards the headstock a little bit. And the first finger is gonna come down to the B string here, the second string at the first fret. So we have C. Now to get back to E minor, we're gonna just move that first finger back up to the fifth string. And then one more time, move the first finger to C. Let's just do it one more time for good measure here. Okay, So E minor, first finger comes up to the fifth string. Just like that. Lift up the first finger, slide the second towards the headstock. First finger comes down right here, second string, first fret. So we have C and E minor, C and E minor. One quick note here. If you know the E minor and the C chords, you can now play a really cool song called Eleanor Rigby Playing by the Beatles, which uses just the E minor and the C chords. I'll put a link in the description below so that you guys can go check that out. Now that you're familiar with the C and E minor chord, the next chord we're going to add into the mix is going to be our G chord. And you guessed it, we're going to be starting at the E minor chord again. So hopefully by now you know where that chord is. But just in case, one more time, we're going to take the first finger, fifth string, second fret, second, second finger right below. Now the G chord. We also have a pivot point on this chord. And again, G is usually a three fingered chord. These are simplified versions to help get your finger started and build confidence that you can actually do this. Okay. Because Again, like I said, I've had lots of people do those three fingered guitar chords and give up in frustration because it was just too much for them at the stage they were at. Alright, so what we're going to do, this first finger now becomes our pivot point, alright? And we're going to slide it forward towards the body of the guitar. And our second finger is going to reach up to the top string third fret and we're going to strum the whole thing. It's really what we call a G6 chord. But we're just going to call it a simple G chord to keep things simple. All right? And you would strum all the strings. Now to get back to E minor, lift up the second finger slip, slide the first finger back in the fret and put your second finger right back on that fourth string second fret. Let's go back to the G chord. Lift up the second finger, slide the first finger forward. Second finger comes up to the third fret on the top string and we strum. Alright, one more time. Lift up the second finger, slide the first finger, second finger to the fourth string, E minor, lift up the second finger. Now back to G string. Slide the first finger forward. Top string, third fret, we have a G chord and I will go in for a close up. All right, here I am on my close up again and we're gonna find that E minor chord. Alright? First and second fingers in the second frets on the fifth and the fourth string, we have E minor. Now to get to that G chord, we're gonna lift up the second finger, slide the first finger towards the body of the guitar. Second finger comes down on that top string third fret, we have G. To get back, we're gonna slide the first finger and then the second finger just comes right underneath.

Okay, lift. Slide the first finger forward. Second finger comes down. Let's do it one more time. Back to E minor. Slide the first finger back, second finger down.

Back to G. Lift up the second finger, slide the first four forward. Second finger on the third fret of the top string and we have G.

Hey guys, I hope you liked the video. Don't forget to give me a thumbs up because it helps people like you see my videos more often. Thanks so much. Let's keep going. So there you go. You have your first three chords. And usually at this stage what I would do with my students is I would just have them practice going from a G chord to an E minor chord to a C chord to back to E minor. So it'd be G, E minor, C, E minor, G, E minor, C, E minor, so forth and so on. But I told you I was going to teach you four chords in this lesson. So we have one more chord that we're going to learn and this is the chord that I simplified even more from my last video. So that we now have a two finger fingered D chord. Let's go check that out. So a lot of students tend to have trouble playing a D chord. They'll play it and it kind of sounds like that. So what we're going to do here is we're basically going to play like a D suspended chord. Okay? I think it's a DSUS 4 and it's going to sound like this. It's very open sounding chord. Now unfortunately we don't have a pivot point to get into this D chord. So what we're going to do is we're going to start still at E minor because that's been our home base and you guys are kind of really familiar with that chord by now. So we're going to start with the E minor and what we're going to do is we're going to lift up the second finger and then move the first finger down two strings this time, alright? Two strings. So you'll be on the third string, second fret. And now we're going to use our third finger. And the third finger is, is going to play the third fret of the second string, alright? And you really want to try and bend this third knuckle. This knuckle on the third finger so that you don't mute that bottom string, alright? And you're going to play the bottom four strings and it's a very nice open sounding chord. It's a very beautiful chord. Alright? So now we're going to get back to E minor. We're going to lift up our third finger. Move the first finger up two strings, second finger comes down. Alright? To get back to that D chord, lift up your second finger. First finger down one, two strings still in the second fret. Third finger goes to the second string. Third fret, we have a D. Okay, one more time, let's go back to E minor. Lift up that third finger. Move the first finger up two strings. Put the second finger down. Have E minor lift up the second finger. Okay? Move the first finger down two strings and then we have the third finger coming right into place on the third fret of the second string. And we now have our D chord. So let's go in for another close up. So That I can show you guys how my fingers are moving. Okay, here we are in a close up here. So we've got our E minor chord. Okay. Again, you should know that one by now. Lift up the second finger, Move it down two strings. Third finger comes to the third fret of the second string. And you can see how bent my knuckle is here. Don't have it lie flat or angled like this. Or you're gonna mute that bottom string. Okay, let's go back to our E minor.

Lift the second finger down two strings. Third finger on the second string. Let's do it one more time. Lift up that third finger. Lift the first finger. There we go. E minor is back in place. Lift up the second finger. Move the first finger down two strings. Third finger comes into play.

And we have our D chord. Now to start using these chords and songs. Ideally, what I would have students do is, like I said, practice switching between the chords. So going from E minor to D, G to D, C to D, C to G. Okay, so you're going to want to try all these different combinations because that's what happens in songs. It's just different variations of these chords. So just a quick example of a song for me to play for you would be something like Brown Eyed Girl. So it would be G to C.

G to D.

Hey, where did we go Hear it.

Days when the rain came. So I'm doing is just some simple strumming and it's going G, C, G, D. That's an example of a song that uses these chords. Like I said, I'll put a link to my website so you can go see some of the other chords. So I told you I was going to give you an extra little bonus secret in this video that I didn't give you in the last video. And that was, how do we play even more songs with just these four chords? And I'll show you that using a capo. So this is my trusty Kaiser capo. All it is is a clamp. If you don't have one of these and you're a beginner, I'd recommend getting one because like I said, you can play a lot more songs with just these chords. So usually chords are grouped together in what we call keys, and they're basically just families of chords that sound good together. That's why I taught you G, C, D and E minor, because there's a lot of songs that just use those four chords. Well, another great key to learn would be the key of A, which usually has the A chord A D chord, an E chord and an F sharp minor. Don't worry about that. We're not going into music theory here. I'm just going to show you how to apply this. Okay, so songs that you know use the key of A would be something like leaving on a jet Plane, Folsom Prison Blues, Walk the Line. There's lots of songs that use the key of A. But what happens if you don't know those chords or you're a beginner and you just know these chords? Well, I'm going to show you a little trick. So this capo can be clamped out the second fret of your guitar and all you do is you just put the big end, the big end clamped over the strings and we call this capoing at the second fret. The capo is at the second fret. So now we have our G chord, we have our D chord, we have our C chord, and we have our E minor chord. And you hear that they sound very different than they did before because of our capo. So now if you see a song that has the chords, A, D, E and F sharp minor, you know a song like Stand By Me by Benny King, that would be a good example. When you see an A chord, you would play your G chord. When you see F sharp minor, you would play E minor. Okay, so A chord is G.

F sharp minor is E minor. Now finish for the D chord. Whenever you see a D chord, all you have to do is play your C chord. And when you see an E chord, you play your D suspended chord. Alright, so let's take an example of a song like Stand By Me. So just to show you quickly, with a song like Stand By Me, which is in the key of A, we're going to put it with these chords. All right, so instead of A, I'm going to play G. What? Darling, darling, stand.

By me oh, stand.

By me.

Oh stand.

Stand by me.

So there's a quick example. So now I've even opened up even more and more songs to you with just four simple chords. If you guys enjoyed this video, enjoyed my teaching style, I do have a full course that is a seven level step by step beginner guitar system. How to get you going and having more fun on the guitar playing the songs you love. We'll go over chords and strumming. So if you want to check that out, I'll put a link below the video. Thanks so much for watching this video. I hope you got a lot out of it. Don't forget to like to comment and subscribe on this video. It really helps me out. And YouTube's gonna pop up a couple more videos over here. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope to see you guys in another lesson video.