How to Play Guitar Chords: Lesson on G chord

Lesson 1: Go ahead and strum a G chord and listen to the sound that it makes. A popular notion is that a chord is a bunch of notes played simultaneously to produce a certain pleasant kind of sound. This is not exactly true. When you strum a chord, you are playing the notes within that chord in a progression. 

If you start from the top of the guitar (the bass strings), you are playing from low to high. If you are strumming from the bottom of the guitar up, you are playing from high to low. We’ve already established that different combinations of up and down create strum patters, which essentially make up songs when moved between different chords within a progression.

HELPFUL HINT - 
The strings on a guitar, played in open (without holding any notes down) form the notes E A D G B E. Memorize that sequence because it will make string reference much easier in the future. If I refer to the A string, I mean the second from the top. If I refer to the B string, I mean the second from the bottom. If I refer to the high-sounding E string, I mean the one on the bottom.

Lesson 2: Strum your G chord again, but this time do it very slowly. Gaping the time between each string with 1-2 seconds. After you hit the bottom E string, go back up, separating the notes out with the same speed.

You actually just played 12 notes. 6 going down and 6 going up, all within the G major chord. Let’s examine the notes that you’ve just played. 1st note: G (top E string, 3rd fret)

1. note: B (A string, 2nd fret)
2. note: D (D string open)
3. note: G (G string open)
4. note: B (B string open)
5. note: G again (bottom E string, 3rd fret)

And then back up: 7th note: G again (bottom E string, 3rd fret)

1. note: B (B string open)
2. note: G (G string open)
3. note: D (D string open)
4. note: B (A string, 2nd fret)
5. note: G (top E string, 3rd fret)

Tab Format:

E|-----------------3-------------B|--------------3-----3----------G|-----------0-----------0-------D|--------0-----------------0----A|-----2-----------------------2-E|--3----------------------------

All of the notes you just played are within the G major scale (G A B C D E F# G A), and if they weren’t they wouldn’t sound good played together. 
The notes in the chord are either the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes (G, B and D) in the scale. All major chords are made up of the 1st 3rd and 5th notes in a scale.

Lesson 3: Let’s go ahead and play those three notes G, B and D separately. If you are finger picking make sure to use your thumb to play the base note (G).

What you are essentially doing by picking out these three notes in the chord is playing a piece of the G major scale. Practice picking these three strings (the three base strings on a guitar on a G chord), so that you can get a good feel for string to string movement. 

You will need to first develop string to string movement before being able to handle multiple string to string movement.

Generally, when people pick up a guitar, they learn the chords first. They might experience some vertical movement (up and down the guitar strings), but mostly they learn a few rock songs that utilize alternate picking on the same string. Our studies will focus on vertical movement, and ignore horizontal movement (moving from left to right and vice versa on fretboards).

Lesson 4: Try adding the low E string in a G chord (a G note) to the series of notes you are playing. Play the 4 notes up and down don’t stop until you can go up and down 5 times consecutively without making a mistake.

These are the notes you just played:

1. note: G (top E string, 3rd fret)
2. note: B (A string, 2nd fret)
3. note: D (D string open)
4. note: G again (bottom E string, 3rd fret)
5. note: D (D string open)
6. note: B (A string, 2nd fret)
7. note: G (top E string, 3rd fret)

Tab format: 

E|-----------3--------3-B|----------------------G|----------------------D|--------0-----0-------A|-----2-----------2----E|--3-------------------

Notice that you are beginning to form a melody. This concept of skipping strings in a chord to form a melody will come in handy later. But first, let’s nail the simple fingering or picking technique of moving up and down the strings vertically, taking one string at a time.

Read Next: Lesson 5 on Guitar Chord