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An acoustic guitar chord is several notes all played at once. There are a lot of different acoustic guitar chords, but if you can learn a few basic ones, you can then play hundreds, if not thousands, of songs. There are some of the major chords, which have a brighter sound whilst the minor chords have a darker or sadder sound.

The chords that you play on a guitar are notated using chord diagrams and those for the acoustic guitar are similar in ways to guitar tabs. The main difference however being that the lines, which represent the strings on the acoustic guitar, run vertically instead of horizontally. Often when you first look at a chord diagram all you will see before you is a grid.

As you look at it, the vertical lines you see in front of you are those that represent the strings on your guitar, whilst the horizontal ones are there to represent the frets on it. Along with these lines there are dots and these represent the position in which you need to press down on the strings. Further to the dots and lines on the grid there are also numbers at the bottom and it is these that tell you where you need to place your fingers on each string. The Number 1 relates to your index finger, Number 2 to your middle finger, Number 3 to your ring finger and Number 4 to your small (pinkie) finger.

Where you see a number 0, that string is left open and played. Where you see an X, that string is left open and not played. The thumb isn’t used too often, but when it is, it’s noted as T.

The first acoustic guitar chord we’re going to talk about is the G-major chord. To play this chord, place your middle finger on the sixth string at the third fret, your index finger on the fifth string at the second fret and your ring finger on the first string on the third fret. Now play each note, including the open strings, one at a time.

It is important as you play each note that you hear them clearly and you do not hear any kind of buzzing or rattling sounds as you play them. If you do hear something additional then trying pressing down on the fingerboard harder or move the finger in question closer to the fret. Also you should make sure that at no time does any of the fingers touch each other or any of the other strings as this can further cause the sound to be off. Plus play each note individually and do not strum them all at the same time. By following these simple steps, you should find that you are able to the G-Major acoustic guitar chord.

The next chord, which we are going to show you how to play on the acoustic guitar in this article is the one known as E-Minor. For this one you need to place your index finger (No 1) on to the 2nd fret of the 5th String, your middle finger (No 2) on the 2nd fret of the 4th string. But when doing this you need to make sure that each finger has sufficient room between them to ensure that they do not touch each other. If you are unsure about the position of your fingers then try each note out and adjust them until you get the clear sound that you are after. But with this could once you have the sound right rather than playing each note separately you strum them together. As you will notice, the sound made when playing this minor chord is much darker than that when playing the G-Major one.

The other basic acoustic guitar chords that all would be guitarists should learn in the beginning are C-Major, D-Major, A-Major and A-Minor. As well as learning about positioning of the fingers in order to play these chords in order to become really proficient a person should spend a great deal of time practicing them. The more a person’s practices then the more likely they are to get their fingers into the right position more quickly and fluidly and so the sound quality they produce as they play will be greatly improved.