Understand Guitar Chords Chart - Beginner Guitarists Guide!

In this article I am going to break down how to read a guitar chords chart so the next time you come across a chord chart you'll know how to decipher it.

How To A Read Guitar Chord Diagram

A chord diagram is diagram that tells you what fingers go where when learning a guitar chord. If you put your guitar out in front of you its basically a snippet of the top of the guitar without the headstock

The Nut

A guitar nut is indicated by a think solid line at the top of diagrams. On your guitar it can be the piece of plastic, metal, or bone just before the headstock.

Horizontal and Vertical Lines

The horizontal lines on a guitar diagram represents the frets on your guitar and the vertical lines represent the guitar strings. The Low E string is the far left vertical line and the high E string is the vertical line on the far right

As you can see on the chord diagrams I provide, the strings on the right are thicker helping to indicated that the vertical line on the left is the low e string.

Finger Numbering

Finger numbers are as follows. Your index finger is the first finger, your middle finger is the second finger, your ring finger is the third finger and your pinky is the fourth finger. If you see the letter "T" in a chord diagram that means to use your thumb.

The "X" and The "O"

The X's mean don't you play these strings when you strum the chord. The "O" mean to play an open string. Meaning, play the string but don't press down anywhere. Open chords refer to chords played using open strings. Usually these chords are played in the first few frets but they don't have to be.

Other Symbols

Numbers On The Side

Because a chord digram only uses a few frets we need a way to tell the player if the chord is to be played elsewhere on the fretboard. So if there is a number usually on the right side, this means to play the chord on this fret.

Squares vs circles

Most chord diagrams don't use this but I provide it because i want to teach you a little music theory as we go along. I use squares for root notes and circles for other notes of the chord.

Root Notes

A root note is the main note for how a chord is built. It's the D note for a D major chord the E note for an E minor chord. A root note is the same for major chords or minor chords meaning, A D major chord has the same root note as a D minor chord. They are both the D note.

A chord can only have one root note but that note can be played multiple times. 

Letters And Numbers

Most chord diagrams use dots to indicate where to put your fingers. Sometimes the finger numbers are inside the dots (like mine) or they can be at the bottom of the diagram if the dots are blank. If you see letters instead of numbers this is referring to which notes are being played.

On my chord diagrams I provide both the dots with the fingers inside and the notes being played which are at the bottom of the diagram.

Line Across Multiple Strings

The curvy line that goes across all the strings or sometimes just a few strings is referring to a bar chord or sometimes spelled barre chord. This means you lay which ever finger indicated across multiple strings like its a "bar."

Guitar Chords Chart Examples

There are various types of chord charts. The most popular type of chart you'll find is what is called a lyric chart. This style is what is found on most guitar sites such as Ultimate Guitar and they way they work you have the lyrics of the song and then the chords right over the words for when they are played.

These are easy to understand and can get beginner guitarists playing songs and having fun so I suppose they have their place but I don't use them for my own students. It's kind of like "pigeon english" but for music and creates more problem than it solves.

Here is a snap shot of the rock song Hotel California by the eagles. 

A real chord chart requires you have some basic understanding of music and in my opinion if you're going to learn a musical instrument you might as well learn a bit about music too...

Simple Chord Chart

Here I have three examples for how to read a simple chord chart. Whether you've been playing guitar for awhile or are a beginner guitarist learning to read charts will speed up your progress and build your musical confidence.

From the layout you get a sense of the entire song which makes it very easy to remember the song and play from memory. You can also see the measures, the time signature, and the key signature. Instead of DDU (down down up) you get the rhythm symbols and will learn how to read actual rhythms. See video for break down of rhythms and reading the chart.

Sometimes there will be a chord diagram above the measure where the chord is to be played unless the next measure uses the same chord. Other times all the chords of the song will be at the start of the song under the title with their prospective diagrams. Also, some charts will also have the tab included as shown in examples 2 and 3. 

Are chord charts better for learning popular songs?

Having taught guitar professionally for over 15 years and observing the progression of absolute beginners as well as helping players who've been self taught 100% yes it is much better to learn songs using chord charts vs lyric charts.

Why don't more people use chord charts to practice their guitar chords? A few reasons, you have to have a little music knowledge and if not a chord chart can be confusing. Lyric charts take little to no understanding of music to understand. Also publishers and even artists make money off the sale of music books so professional charts creates a conflict of interest.

Inside the Guitar GPS Method we've got an ever growing database of chord charts that make it easy for even beginner guitarists to learn full songs, see the layout for how the songs was created (important to learn songs quickly or if you wish to study songwriting) and they are leveled.

This way it makes it really easy to know what songs would be good to work on next and we don't dumb them down and have members use a capo for everything because they can't play barre chords.

**Bar chords are easy if you build your skills the right way!

technique change box, details practice roll, example