A short instructional YouTube transcript by Lauren Bateman teaching beginner guitarists how to form and transition between A major and E major chords starting from a D chord. The instructor demonstrates finger placement, common pitfalls (finger crowding on A), transitions between D↔E↔A and touches on practice recommendations (working up to 100 bpm and practicing transitions with other chords).
All right, now that we finally accomplish learning the full C and G chords, what we're going to do is we're going to add two more major chords into the mix, which is an A chord and an E chord. Now, these two chords are awesome to learn because they work really well with D. There's a lot of songs out there that just use these three chords, A, D and E. There's a lot of Johnny Cash songs that you can play with a D and E. Three Little Birds by Bob Marley is another one. There's a lot of songs where you can just play these three chords and you'll be able to play the majority of the song. So first, let's talk about how to play these chords. So I'm going to start with something. You know, I always like starting from what you know. So let's start with the D chord. So hopefully you've learned your D chord by now, and you have it down pretty well. What we're going to do to get to an E chord, this is E major, not E minor, E major. We're going to keep our first finger down. We're going to lift up our other fingers, and we're going to slide that to the first fret. So that is the start of your E chord. We're going to take the second finger and bring it up to the second fret of the fifth string. And the third finger is going to go right below it on the fourth string, second fret, and you get to strum all six chords. Beautiful. E major chord. Now, to get back to D, just lift up the top two fingers, slide the first finger back to the second fret, and put your D chord in place.
All right, to get back to E major, leave the first finger down, lift up the other two fingers, slide the first finger to the first fret, take the second finger, put it on the second fret of the fifth string, the third finger on the second fret of the fourth string. And now we have E major. So let's do that one more time. Let's go back to the D chord. We're back at D. Lift up the other two fingers, leave the first finger in place, slide it up to the first fret on the third string, and then move your other two fingers. We're going to take the second finger to the fifth string, second fret, and the third finger to the second fret of the fourth string.
And that is E major. Now let's figure out how to get into A from D. So what we're going to do is we're going to take our first finger and move it up a string and then the rest of the fingers march in place underneath. So all three fingers are going to be stuck in the second fret. So I have my first finger on the second fret of the fourth string. My second finger is on the second fret of the third string and my third finger is on the second fret of the second string.
Now for some people, this can be a tricky chord to play because we're squishing all the fingers into one fret. But don't worry, you'll have to move these fingers, this top finger, back towards the back part of the fret, which means you might have to press this string, that fourth string, a little harder to get the chord to ring out. So let's go back to our D chord again. So we have D, let's take that first finger, move it up one string, slide it to the back of the fret, put the second finger right underneath it on the third string and the third finger right underneath that on the second string, all in the second fret. And we have A major. One more time, let's go back to our D chord.
Alright, so we're back at D. Lift up the first finger and move it up one string in the second fret, slide it back, take your second finger, put it right underneath on the third string, second fret, and your third finger is going to go right underneath that on the second fret of the second string.
And that is A major. So what I'll do is I'll go in for a close up to show you these two chords and then we'll keep moving. Welcome to the close up. We're going to go over how to get in and out of the A and E chord. So let's first start with something we know, because I always like to start with something we know. And that's a D chord. So we're going to start by getting into E major. So take away the bottom two fingers, leave this first finger on that second or on that third string, we're going to slide it to the first fret, we're going to take the second finger up to the fifth string, second fret, and our third finger on the second fret of the fourth string.
And that is E major. So lift up these two fingers, take them away, go back to D.
To get back to E major, take away the bottom two fingers, slide to the first fret, then we have the second finger on the fifth string, the third finger on the fourth string, both of them in the second fret.
To get back to D, lift them up, slide forward.
D.
And to get to E, slide that first finger forward, second finger to the fifth string, third finger to the fourth string, Strum all six strings. So now how do we get to A? So if we go back to the D chord, we're going to take the first finger, move it up A string. Second finger goes right below that, Third finger goes right below that. They're all smooshed in the second fret, and you can strum the bottom five strings. So we go back to D.
First finger moves up one and slide it to the back of the fret. Second finger goes right under that, and the third finger goes right under that. So we're on the fourth, third, and second strings all in the second fret. And we play five str.
One more time, back to D. First finger up, slide it back, second finger underneath, third finger underneath.
And the tough thing with the A chord is because this finger is all the way back here, you have to remember to press harder with this finger than the other two.
And that is your A major chord. Now, how do we get from A to E? I find the easiest way is to lift up the first finger and move these two fingers up two strings. All right? And then put your first finger down on the first. The first fret of the third string to get back to A, lift up the first finger, move these two down two sets of strings, and then put the first finger on top to get back to E, lift up the first finger, move these up 12 sets of strings. First finger goes to the third string, first fret to get back to A, Lift up the first finger, move these guys down two sets of strings, and you're back to A. So now that you've learned your A major in your E major chord, I want you to practice doing chord changes. Yes, you're gonna have to practice going from A to E, A to D, and then D to E. If you can learn that, then you've just added a few thousand more songs to your song repertoire. There's so many cool. So many songs that use these chords. So they're very important to learn. And also you can work on transitioning from these chords into your other chords. So you can practice going from A to C or A to G. And you can practice going E major to C. E major to G. Practice going between as many chords as possible. It's going to work on the dexterity in your hands and in your fingers, and it's just going to make you a more versatile player overall. So work on those chord changes. Get them up to 100 beats per minute each, and then you can move on to your next cords.
