Brief Summary
This video provides a beginner's guide to playing open chords on the guitar, covering essential techniques and principles for proper chord execution and fretting hand positioning.
- Introduction to open chords and their significance.
- Explanation of chord diagrams and how to interpret them.
- Importance of thumb position and finger placement techniques.
- Guidelines for strumming, including bass note awareness.
- Tips for practice and finger numbering.
The video begins with an introduction aimed at beginners, focusing on how to play open chords. Open chords are basic chords that utilize unfretted strings, prompting a discussion on the most common ones, such as A minor, E minor, G, C, and D.
Open chords are introduced as the fundamental starting point for guitar players. These chords contain open strings, meaning that some strings are played without being fretted, resulting in a rich sound characteristic of open chords.
Chord charts are depicted visually with 6 vertical lines representing strings and horizontal lines for frets. The video explains the significance of markings such as dots or circles for finger placement, while X's denote strings that should not be played.
Proper thumb position is emphasized, recommending that beginners place their thumb behind the guitar neck, around the second fret space, making sure it’s flat and providing support for the fingers. Poor thumb positioning can lead to difficulty in fretting properly.
The video advises on maintaining a good posture while playing, suggesting the use of a footstool or crossing legs to raise the neck of the guitar. This positioning aids in better access to the frets.
It is suggested to visualize holding a ball in the fretting hand's palm, which encourages a relaxed and effective hand position on the guitar, leading to improved finger placement and comfort.
The importance of placing fingers close to the fret is discussed. Beginners should aim to position their fingers just before the fret metal without pressing on it, as this technique helps produce clear sounds when fretting.
Using fingertips instead of flat fingers is highlighted, as flattening can mute adjacent strings and disrupt sound quality. This position also necessitates short, well-placed fingernails for better playability.
A recap emphasizes thumb positioning behind the second fret, the necessity of keeping fingers close to frets, and the critical use of fingertips. The importance of strumming the correct strings is reiterated, particularly focusing on the root notes for various chords.
The significance of root notes is explained, differentiating between chords such as E minor, A minor, and D, which have specific strings that should or should not be played to maintain sound integrity.
This section reflects on earlier points, reiterating the role of the thumb, finger placement, and respecting the strings played, reinforcing the key concepts essential for mastering open chords.
The video encourages viewers to practice various open chords, applying the techniques discussed. E minor is recommended as a good starting point and a sense of experimentation with other chords is advocated.
Finger numbering is explained, with the index finger as one, the middle as two, the ring as three, and the pinky as four. While finger numbers help in transitioning between chords smoothly, the importance of comfort during play is stressed.
The video concludes with an encouragement to practice open chords correctly while announcing an upcoming video focused on transitioning between chords more smoothly, encouraging viewers to subscribe for more content.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “How to play OPEN CHORDS - essential tips, and tricks. FULL BEGINNER LESSON”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 okay morning folks welcome back right today's video is a quick guide it's more of a beginner's introduction if you like or a refresher on how to play open chords so I don't mean bar chords we've got another video on that which I'll link to we mean open chords these are the chords you will start with like your a minor your E minor your G your C your D they're called open chords because some of the strings you won't be fretting so they will have open strings ringing okay now first things first let's just have a quick look at how these chords are written down so chord diagrams so I'll put a picture in here and then we'll compare it with the
0:47 guitar so we've got six strings running this way the Frets running this way this thick piece at the top here is called the that's represented by a thicker line on a chord diagram and then running left to right you've got the low E or sixth string a or 5ifth D or fourth g3d B 2nd e first so that picture here represents this at the top of the guitar and the things you will see on this are knots above the nut which means open strings X's sometimes which means don't play
1:33 that string more of which later and you'll see blobs or circles in positions here so the blobs mean where do we put our fingers sometimes these blobs will have numbers on which means what finger to use although that doesn't matter as we'll talk about shortly the important thing is where are these blobs so I will put on a chord of E minor and we can see from this chord diagram that it matches so there's me E minor reference it to the picture open string finger finger open open open okay so now we've talked about how chords are written down let's talk about the main things we have to think about
2:18 and it all stems from our fretting hand thumb so I like to put the thumb at least to start with as a beginner behind the neck of the guitar around about where the second fret space will sit and we have the thumb flat so this soft pad is touching it and we just place it here okay so it supports the fingers okay not over here which people often do because it's not supporting the fingers not down here Not Bent like this let's have it flat so it gives you a nice stable surface and not up over the top although I will say that later in your guitaring life and you will also see people doing this you can put your thumb over the top here there's another
3:04 reason for that to do with muting strings or even helping out with bar cords but to start off with get it behind the neck of the guitar now in order to do that most comfortably and not strain your wrist probably a good idea to raise the guitar up with maybe a foot stool some people put it on this leg I tend to cross my legs over like that but a foot stool will raise the neck of the guitar so it's not down here it's up here and slightly more comfortable and in imagine there's a ball a little squash ball or golf ball in the palm of your hand cuz what that will do that will create this nice sort of cup shape that you're able to put on the guitar like this another way to do it hang your hand like this relax It To The Ground turn that round place it there but your thumb
3:53 is the key okay so that's point one thumb point two where do we put our finger fingers so I've got to put a finger down in the second fret here do I put it back here do I put it on here no what you do you put it as close to the metal of the Fret that we can you'll see the cord Drager we'll have it placed in the middle we want it at the second fret so we get as close to the Fret without being on it if I put it on the Fret look sounds dead if I put it too back too far back it rattles unless you press really hard because what you're doing is you're locking the string down against the metal of the Fret so you want to get as close to that as you can without being on it now we'll see with E minor of course they both won't go right close to the Fret doesn't fit it doesn't matter
4:40 it's the best compromise we get our second finger as close as we can and our first finger tucks behind it we're not touching the metal though that's important okay so thumb behind the neck flat and stable fingers close to the Frets as you can and the other key point is use our fingertips not flat like this fingertips if you flatten them down you're going to be muting these other strings okay and you might even catch this E string with the back of this hand here so fingertips it all comes to thinking about this ball it all comes to having the guitar in the right posture it all comes about having our Thumb in the right place if your nails are too long you will struggle to stand your
5:27 fingers up like this so if you can hold your Plum and put it on top of your finger and it tilts over cuz the nail is pushing it then I'm afraid they're too long you'll have to file them down or you'll just know because you won't be able to get your fingertips the fingers will go like this as your nail pushes them there okay so so far then Thumb in the right place behind the second fret and straight or behind the second fret space should I say up to the Frets as close as you can get so if we want second fret you get as close to the second fret as you can not in the middle and not near the first fret and use your fingertips while retaining this nice dropped Palm
6:14 position okay so the O's on the diagram mean no fingers but open strings [Music] ringing the other thing you might find sometimes is you'll find an X and and X means do not play that string now why is that well the root note or the base note the lowest note sounding note of the chord wants to be the lowest one that the listener hears now in the case of E minor which is this or E [Music] major or G for example we want to play all six strings because our base not note is on that string so e is the open string but e and e mar minor so that's the lowest
7:00 one we want sounding G well third fret E string it actually is a note of G so we start it there but what if we had a minor okay so here's our a minor look let's compare that to the chord diagram notice something though there's an X here well that's because you don't want to start on that string we only want to strum five strings listen to it after I do six doesn't sound quite as good sounds a bit muddy that's cuz the Basse note the root note the lowest sounding note in the chord wants to be a note of a and
7:46 this string here the fifth string which is open that is a note of a what about D another example well you notice D has two x's listen if I play all six strings sounds horrible if I go from there from the fourth string which is where the O is note the x is where the o is that fourth string is a note of D so that's where I want to start my strumming from right so in summary then we've talked about where our thumb goes be behind the second fret space on
8:31 the soft pad touching the back of the neck and it's straight and I tend to have it just above the middle there like that if you can see we place our fingers as close to the Fret that we need as possible so it doesn't Buzz we use our fingertips and then equally importantly once we've got all that right we have to respect what string we start strumming from okay [Music] so you'll find sometimes your thumb will go in a slightly different place like with a c which is quite a difficult one sometimes you have to turn it slightly but ultimately it stays [Music] there so that's what I want you to
9:17 practice okay choose any chord from any chord book any open chords E minor is a good one to start with a minor g c d Etc put them on strum them follow those rules mess around till they sound clear okay so you will also see some books put Finger numbers on the chords like with E minor it might say one or two one is index two is Middle three is ring finger four is Pinky it doesn't really matter when you're just playing a chord on its own which fingers you use I can do it with one and two two and three or three and four when it matters is when you're
10:05 changing to other chords okay but that's the next video how to string chords together so for the moment just practice using whatever feels most comfortable to you like a minor I could do that or I could do that g we could do that with two one and three or we could do do that with three 2 and four doesn't matter not at this stage where it matters is to make changing from one chord to the next smooth but as I say that's for the next video okay now what you will think is well I haven't put diagrams of all the chords in this video well no because you've probably already got a book that came with your
10:52 guitar or a sheet which came with your guitar or beginner guide that you've got which will have these chord diagrams in and they're all the same okay so essentially use what you've got but bear in mind that we're looking at the X's for what notot to play the O's for the open and the circles where the fingers go the most important part of this lesson is not what the chords actually are but it's getting our Thumb in the right place getting our fingers up to the Frets and not on them using our fingertips and starting the strum in the right place so strumming the right number of strings okay brilliant guys so that's your basic guide to open chords to follow in the next few days we'll have
11:37 very important clip video on how to actually change chords smoothly because that's obviously important but first of all let's get them sounding good on their own thanks every so much for watching really appreciate the support um like And subscribe Etc um and I'll see you guys all soon thanks very much for watching cheers bye
