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The Gig Bag Book of Picture Chords for All Guitarists: (Compact Reference Library Series)

Understanding Chord Progressions for Guitar

Teach Yourself VISUALLY Bass Guitar

Incredible Chord Finder: A Complete Guide to 1116 Guitar Chords

Guitar Player Repair Guide

Six strings, countless possibilities.

A guitar can produce an enormous range of moods and tones, from simple, upbeat major chords to eerie, mournful diminished sevenths and everything in between. This guide compiles all the chords you’ll ever need in one place, with:

Instructions on how to read chord charts
A breakdown of the major families of chords and their characteristic sounds
Complete chord charts for more than 350 different guitar chords

Guitar Chord Basics

This guide contains the essential major and minor guitar chords that form the foundation of nearly all rock, pop, and country songs, as well as the more complex types of chords used most often in playing blues and jazz guitar.

What’s a Chord?

A chord is a combination of three or more different musical notes played at the same time. Chords are played on a guitar by strumming or plucking three or more strings at once while fretting those strings (pressing them against the fretboard at certain frets). Since the guitar has six strings, the maximum number of notes in a guitar chord is six.

Reading Chord Charts

Visual depictions of guitar chords are called chord charts, chord maps, or chord diagrams. Here’s how to read them.

Vertical lines: Represent the guitar’s six strings, with the low E string on the left side and high E on the right.
Horizontal lines: Represent frets, except for the top line, which usually represents the nut (the point at which the guitar’s headstock meets the neck) but in some cases may represent a fret. If the top line represents a fret, the fret position is noted with a roman numeral to the right of the diagram. For example, “VI” means that the chord should be played at the sixth fret.
Black dot on a vertical line: Indicates where the string should be fretted.
“X” above a vertical line: Means that the marked string should not be played when sounding the chord.
“O” above a vertical line: Means that the marked string should be played open (without being fretted). When this “O” is red, that indicates that the open string is also the root note of the chord.
Red dot on a vertical line: Indicates the chord’s root note(s). The root of an A major chord is an A, for example. An A will occur at least once (or more than once) in a chord whose root is A.