A short beginner-focused YouTube guitar lesson by Lauren Bateman explaining how to read guitar chord diagrams. The video describes the diagram grid (strings vertical, frets horizontal), symbols (O=open string, X=don’t play), and finger-number coordinates, and demonstrates with E minor, C major, and G chord examples. It ends with a call-to-action to visit Bateman’s seven-level guitar system.
Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome back. Lauren Bateman. Here in this lesson video, we're going to go over how to read a chord diagram so that you can learn as many chords as you want.
Now, a chord diagram is just a little block, and it has lots of little blocks inside, but it tells you a lot of information. Now you're going to see. It almost looks like the guitar. You can see this guitar here straight up and down. Okay, we're to going where there's lines going vertically up and down. Those are your strings. Okay? And on this side of the diagram is the thickest string of the guitar, this thick string. And on the left side of the diagram is the thinnest string. Okay? So you have the strings, and then within that, there's these blocks that move down the guitar. And each one of those represents a first. So the first block would be your first fret, your second fret, your third fret, so forth and so on. So it's really just a grid, but it tells you some very important information. So let's take a look at a couple different chords here to show you what we're going to be doing. The first chord we're going to start with is an E minor chord up here. Now, you're going to see that there's these little circles on the top of the chord diagram. The little circles mean we're not going to play anything except the open string. That means there's no finger pressing the string. Okay? So you'll notice that the top string, the bottom string, the second string, and the third string are all played open. What you'll also notice is there's two black dots with a number. Those represent positions we are going to fret. One is the first finger. Two is the second finger. Three is the third finger. Four is your pinky. So in this particular example, we're just using fingers one and two. Okay, first finger. It's saying the first finger is going to be up the second fret and on the fifth string. And the second finger is going to be the second fret on the fourth string. So all it's telling you is what fingers we're using 1 and 2 and then the location of those fingers. So we're going to count up two frets and then down a string to the fifth string for the first finger, down two strings for the second finger. Okay. Which would be our D string. Okay? So that's just one example. Let's take a look at another chord. Let's take a look at a full C major chord with three fingers. Now in this diagram you're going to notice the top string has an X above it, okay? That X means do not strum this string. So when we played an E minor chord, we played all the strings. That sixth string was open. So when you would play an E minor chord, you play everything. When you play a C chord, you don't want to hit that top string. As best as possible, Try to just hit the bottom five strings. That's what we're going for. And that's what that X indicates. It's saying, don't hit this string, okay? And you'll notice that we have open strings on the bottom E string and the G string, okay? Those are played open, meaning there's no finger on those strings. The other three strings have coordinates. So let's figure them out. So let's start with the third finger. It's saying the third finger is on the third fret on the fifth string, which is the A string. We then have the second finger which is on the second fret of the fourth string, the D string. And then we have the first finger on the first fret of the B string, okay? So that's all it's saying. So it's telling you, hey, this, if you want to play C chord, this is how you figure it out. Out. Let's do one more example here.
Let's do a G chord, okay? A full fingered G chord. And now you can see there's open strings again. The middle three D, G, B are all played open. Now this is a six string chord. Notice there's no X's. So we're going to strum all six strings of this chord. Let's start again with our third finger on the bottom. It's saying count up three frets, okay? Bottom string, third finger on the third fret. Then the second finger we're going to bring to the top string three frets down, okay? And then the first finger is going to go on the second fret down one string on the A string, okay? So you can see this is all a chord diagram is doing is it's just telling you the coordinates how to find what a guitar chord looks like on your guitar. Not all the chord diagrams will have finger numbers like mine. Some don't. Some assume that you know the finger numbers. I don't assume that you know anything. So I do put the finger numbers on the chord diagrams. But that is the basics of reading a chord diagram. So now when you go and you look at them, you can say, oh, okay, I know how to figure out a D chord. I know how to figure out an A minor chord, an E major chord. You can now go and figure out all of these chords on the guitar by just looking at the chord chart and working out the coordinate system. Hope you guys enjoyed this lesson. If you are interested in learning the guitar in a step by step way, check out my seven level guitar system where I teach you basically from the beginning how to play the guitar. Strumming chords picking I'll put a link in the description below for you guys to go check that out. YouTube is going to pop up a couple more videos over here. Go check those out if you're interested and I hope to see you guys in another lesson video.
