Guitar Lesson 03: reading a chord diagram
Taught by Fret, your Change Your Strings Guitar teacher ·
A chord diagram is a picture of the fretboard stood upright. The six vertical lines are strings, low E on the left to high e on the right. Horizontal lines are frets. A dot shows where to press, the number says which finger, O means play open, and X means do not play that string.
Watch JustinGuitar's walkthrough in the video above, then read the breakdown.
A chord diagram is the simplest map in music once you know the key to it. And reading before you play is exactly the deliberate order Michael Angelo Batio drills into beginners: understand the shape, then execute it cleanly. Picture standing your guitar up on the floor, headstock at the top, looking straight at the fretboard. That is what the diagram shows.
Here is how to read it:
- Vertical lines are the strings. There are six. The leftmost line is your thickest string (low E), the rightmost is your thinnest (high e). Left to right: E, A, D, G, B, E, the names from Lesson 01.
- Horizontal lines are the frets. The thick line across the very top is the nut. The space just below it is the 1st fret, the next space down is the 2nd fret, and so on.
- Dots are your fingers. A dot in a space means press that string down in that fret.
- Numbers name the finger. 1 is index, 2 is middle, 3 is ring, 4 is pinky. The number sits inside the dot.
- O and X sit above the nut. An O over a string means play it open, no finger. An X means do not play that string at all.
Read this one for real. It is E minor, your chord in the next lesson:
Two dots at the 2nd fret: middle finger (2) on the A string, ring finger (3) on the D string. The four O marks mean the other strings ring open.Narrate it out loud: low E open, A string pressed at the 2nd fret with finger 2, D string pressed at the 2nd fret with finger 3, then G, B, and high e all open. That is the whole picture.
Now one with an X and three fingers, so you know those symbols on sight. This is A major, coming in Lesson 05:
The X over the low E means skip it. Three fingers stack at the 2nd fret on D, G, and B. The open A and high e still ring.Practice this
Take two minutes and narrate both diagrams above out loud: name each string left to right, find the nut, point to each dot and say the fret and finger number, then call out every O and X. Do not play them yet. Reading a shape fluently first makes the playing far easier.
Where you are
In Lesson 02: how to hold the guitar you got comfortable, and now you can read the map that tells your fingers where to land. Next, Lesson 04: your first chord (Em), where you press that first shape down and make it ring.