The 7 Chords You NEED To Know - Beginner Chords For Acoustic Guitar

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. My name is Lauren Bape and in this video we're going to be going over the seven chords that you should be learning as a beginner guitar player to learn how to play songs and have more fun with your guitar. So let's get into it.

So I'm going to show you seven open chords that are commonly used in guitar for various songs. So I'm going to show you them in kind of chord grouping so you know which ones sound good together and which ones that you can practice together to work towards playing song. Now, I usually don't jump right into three finger chords with my beginner guitar players, so if you're an absolute beginner, I would recommend checking out my other video on the four easy versions of the E minor, C, G and D chord. Probably find that a lot more helpful. But if you want to jump in with the three fingered chords, let's get to it. So the first set of chords I'm going to show you work really well together. You'll see them a lot songs, and I think they work really well in terms of transitioning because they have some pivot points on your fingers that you might find helpful for learning. So the first one we're going to learn is an E minor chord, which I think is one of the easiest guitar chords to learn. So some of you might know this, but let's just go over it in review real quick. So the first finger is going to go to the second fret of the fifth string and your second finger just goes right below it on the fourth string, second fret, and we have an E minor chord and you get to strum all six strings. All right, so once again we're going to take our first finger, we're gonna go on the fifth string second fret, and then the second finger is gonna go right below it on the fourth string second fret. And that is our E minor chord. Okay, we get to strum all six strings. Now the next couple chords I'm gonna show you are gonna be based around this E minor chord. I think it's. This is like the foundation chord. And we're gonna talk about a pivot point that we can use to get in and out of the next chords, which is why pause the video, make sure you got the E minor chord. And then we're going to keep going. So from E minor, the first one we're going to do is a G chord and what we're going to do is we're going to leave the first finger in place, just slide it up a little bit in the fret of the guitar and I'll go in for a close up to show you guys. In a little bit, we're going to take the second finger up to the top string, third finger to the bottom string, third fret. So our pivot is our first finger stays in place, pivot the second finger up and then put the third finger down on the bottom fret. To get back to E minor, lift up the third finger, remove the second finger and put it underneath the first finger. Okay.

Before I go into the close up, I'm going to show you one more time the G chord. Lift up the second finger, bring it up, Third finger comes to the bottom string, third fret.

And you're on G. Okay, E minor.

G. Let's check out a real quick close up. Alright, so here we have the E minor chord. Here's my pivot. Second finger comes up, third finger goes to the third fret on the bottom string. Okay, so we have G. We go a little bit closer here. E minor G.

E minor, pivot up, third finger on the bottom G. So that's your E minor and G chord. Another chord that's commonly associated and used with those is a C major chord. And for the C major chord, the pivot point is the second finger. So we're going to leave the second finger down. So we're going to lift up the first finger, pivot up the third finger. I always recommend getting the third finger down first because it's way easier to move the first finger. So lift up the first finger, pivot the third finger up, fifth string, third fret, and then put the first finger down on the B string on the first fret. So second string, first fret. So to pivot back to E minor, lift up the third finger and put the first finger back in place on that fifth string. So one more time, we're going to lift up the first finger, leave the second finger, that's our pivot point. Third finger comes up, first finger goes down.

So here's my close up. We're going to make the E minor chord.

Leave your second finger. This is our pivot. Third finger comes up to the third fret on the fifth string. First finger comes down here to the D string. We have a C chord. So back to E minor, just pivot back.

And then pivot to the C chord, E minor.

And then pivot third finger up to the fifth string, third fret, first finger down here to the B string on the first, first rep. Hey guys, real quick, if you're enjoying the content in this lesson. Just make sure to give me a like because it really helps my channel and I always love when I get likes. So thanks so much. So there you have it. You have G, E minor and C. The fourth chord that is commonly associated with these chords is a D chord. We're also going to go start with the E minor chord. So what we're going to do, the thing that I'd like to teach students first is to take these two fingers. These two fingers are going to stay in the same fret. They're just going to move down to the first string and the third string. So there's actually going to be a string in between them. So you take these two fingers, you lift them, move them down. First finger goes to the third string, second finger goes to the first string on the bottom. Okay. E minor. So that's just the first part. There's one more finger we have to throw in. But that's the basic movement because once you get these in place, you, you just plop your third finger on the third fret of the second string and you have a D major chord. So E minor, get the two fingers down, first string, third string. And then on the second string we have the third finger at the third fret. So let me go in for a close up to show you that one. Alright, so here's the E minor and we're moving these fingers. This finger goes to the third string, this finger goes to the bottom. Okay, that's the start. E minor.

First and third. Okay. E minor first and third. And then the third finger comes to the second string, third fret. In this one you can often mute the bottom string because the finger tends to lie flat. Really? See how you can like you can't even see my fingertip. You can't even see my fingernail because my finger is really at a good angle, perpendicular to the guitar. So E minor to D.

E minor.

D.

The next chord I'm going to show you is an A minor chord. And this chord is very easy to learn if you know a C chord. So if you know C, all you have to do is take the third finger and plop it underneath the second finger. The first and second finger don't move at all. Alright, so it's just moving the third finger from C.

Put it right underneath that second finger. So you're going to end up on the, the third string. Second fret, that's where the third finger ends up. And that's A minor. Very sad sounding chord. So we have A C chord to A minor.

C chord to A minor. So just really moving one finger back and forth. That's how we get from C to A minor. And while we're on A minor and then I'll go in for a close up, I'm going to show you E major because the E major shape is just A minor, we just move everything up one string, that's E major. So move everything down one string, we have A minor. Move everything up one string, we have E major. So let me go in for that close up. Alright, starting from our C chord, we just take the third finger and you put it, plop it right below, right below the second finger. So all I did was take this third finger and I'm moving it here, third finger here to here, here to here. So you have C, A minor, C, A minor, C, A minor, C, A minor. Now to get to E major we just take this shape stays the same. You just move everything up one string and now you get E major to go back to A minor. Move everything down A string to get back to E major. Move everything up one string one more time, A minor and then E major.

Hey guys, real quick, if you're enjoying this content, don't forget to subscribe to the channel because you'll be able to see when I release new videos just like this one. All right, so so far we've learned the C chord, the G chord, the D chord, the A minor chord, and those all go really well together. And I gave you the E major chord. So the E major chord and the D chord go very, very well with an A major chord. Now the A major chord is probably one of the hardest open chords to learn because this first finger sits in the back of the fret and oftentimes gets muted. So you just have to remember to push a little bit harder. But to go from the to the A chord.

I sometimes just teach people from D. You lift up the third finger, these two fingers get smushed. It's almost like going from E minor and then moving down the fingers one string. So you have first finger on the fourth string, second finger on the third string and they're both in the second fret. And then the third finger comes down and squishes in the second fret on the second string. Okay, so let's do it from E minor because here we go, E minor, move both those fingers down one string, third finger comes down, second string, second fret, and there you go, we have an A major back to E minor.

And then come back down we got A major.

E minor.

And then to get to A, just move everything down or sorry to D and play your D chord.

Alright, so here's the close up. I got my A chord. That's what it looks like. So from E minor we just move these two fingers down one string, put the third finger underneath and that's your A chord. Okay, so we have E minor, move down A minor. We'll put that more in frame for you guys. So E minor.

A minor. And then if you want to go from A minor to D, lift up your third finger, separate these two fingers. It's almost kind of like moving how you did from E minor, move these two fingers first and then put that third finger in place.

Now the last chord I'm going to show you is a D minor chord. Very sad sounding chord. There's really no easy way to get in and out of it. But we can learn it from a D major since our third finger is already in place. So basically the third finger remains the same. So I guess you can kind of call that a pivot point from D major.

And we have the third.

Third finger on the third fret of the second string. The second finger is going to go from the bottom string to the third string. So the second finger is basically trading spaces with the first finger. Okay. And then the first finger comes to the first string, first fret. Very awkward chord in the beginning for a lot of people. So go back to your D major. The first finger and the second finger swaps spots. The first finger goes to the first string, first fret, and that's D minor. So we have D major, D minor, D major and D minor. Let me show you on a close up and we'll do a wrap up. So here we have D major. So this third finger is not going to move at all.

Okay.

So the bottom finger comes up, trades places with the first finger. First finger goes to the first fret, first string. All right, we got a D chord.

And D minor. One more time. D chord and D minor.

So I think I lied. I said I was going to show you one more chord. I actually have one more important chord to show you, which is an F major 7 chord. F major 7. So most people, you know, F, it's a bar chord. Well, I like to show, you know, kind of beginner players and more beginner intermediate players how to play an F major 7 because it gives them access to a lot more songs without having to jump into bar chords just yet. So all that, The F major 7 is the one I'm going to show you in this video is we're going to take a C chord. We're going to move our second finger down one string, and our pinky comes right underneath the third finger. Okay, so back to a C major chord.

Second finger comes down a string, pinky comes right underneath the third finger. And this is an F major seven. And it'll work for a lot of songs. So we have C again, second finger down, pinky under F major 7. Let me show you that on close up. Okay, so here's your C chord. Second finger comes down. Pinky ends up here on the fourth string, third fret. So the third finger and the pinky are like friends, really close together.

So, C chord, F major 7. C chord, F major 7. C chord', F major 7. Now, with the open chord you learned in this video, there's a lot of songs you can play. I have a bunch on my website, laurenbateman.com I actually have a section where it's beginner guitar songs, and I list songs by the chords that are used in them. So oftentimes you're going to find songs that use A, D and E together. So those are three chords that you should practice switching between very often. A lot of songs are going to have G, C, D, and F. All right. You'll also see a lot of songs that have E minor, G, D, C, or even A minor. You're going to want to practice switching between all these chords so that when you go and play songs and it actually makes them sound a lot better. And I would just keep your strumming really, really simplified in the beginning. So hope you guys enjoyed this lesson. Don't forget to give me a like comment below if you find it helpful. And don't forget to subscribe because you'll be able to see a lot more of my videos as they come up. YouTube's going to pop a couple more videos over here. I hope you guys go and check that out. I'll see you guys in another lesson video.