If you are looking for a handy guitar chords reference, you've come to the right place. We have created this guitar chords chart that will help you learn new chords and play your favorite songs. You can download the chart in pdf format or you can browse the chords online with our Online Guitar Chords Dictionary
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This Guitar Chord Chart is different from the others because it contains diagrams packed with useful information, as the chart shows:
5+ Guitar Bar Chords Charts. A barre chord or guitar bar chords chart shows the chords that can be played even in an open string, the tabs or fret here shows the fingerboard with multiple fingers that must be pressed down in order to elicit a single note or chord. The E Shaped Barre Chord This is one of the most commonly used barre chords, it is fairly easy to understand and not that difficult to play. The E Shape Barre chord gets it’s name from the E major open chord shape. If you glance to the right, you can see a chord chart demonstrating the shape of the open chord.
Having all this information in a single, easy to read diagrams is incredibly helpful for learning how to play chords on the guitar, chord music theory, and the fretboard. This chart is great for players of all levels.
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Are you a beginner guitar player? Good, you can just read where to place your fingers on the neck and start playing songs. Are you an advanced guitarist? Great, then you can understand how to construct chords by assembling intervals. You can download the chord chart for free by clicking the green button below:
What's inside the Chords Pdf
The pdf ebook shows you the guitar chords diagrams grouped for root and type. If you are a beginner guitarist, don't feel intimidated by the fact that exist many different fingerings: you only need to know a few major and minor chords to start playing your favorite songs and have fun with your friends.
If you want to go a step further, you could learn some Dominant Chords, that give to your sound a bluesy feel, and you'll be all set for entertaining your audience.
Here are the chord types that you'll find in the free ebook
Major chords
Major chords have a bright and happy sound. They are composed of the Root, the Major Third and the Fifth. Of course, you don't have to know chords theory to play these chords, just learn the shapes and start rocking!
b2
b3
4
5
6
7
Learn more by visiting the how to read chord diagrams tutorial
Minor Chords
On the contrary, minor chords have a sad and melancholy sound. They are used a lot in love and romantic songs, for the particular feeling they create. A minor chord is composed of the Root, the Minor Third and the Perfect Fifth.
b2
b3
4
5
6
7
A dominant seventh chord is composed by the Root, the Major Third, Perfect Fifth and the Minor Seventh. Blues progressions use dominant chords all the time, for example, try this basic blues progression: C7 | C7 | F7 | G7.
b2
b3
4
5
6
7
Movable Chords (with and without Barre)
Movable chords are shapes that you can shift up or down the neck (without changing finger positions) to play chords with different names (C, D, E, F#, and so forth) but of the same type (Major, Minor, 7, and, minor, dominant or other types).
That's the reason we call these diagrams movable. With movable shapes, we don't play any open strings.
If you memorize these fingerings, you'll be able to play almost any chord, by placing the movable shape at the fret that corresponds to the root of the chord you want to play. In the diagrams, the root note is the one denoted by the number 1 at the bottom of the diagrams.
For example, a movable shape for the Dominant Seventh chord is the following:
The first diagram shows you the fingering of a C7 chord, that has the lower root at the 3rd fret of the A string.
If you want to play a D7 chord, you have to shift the shape up by two frets, until the root (the fret with the number 1 at the bottom of the chart) is at the 5th fret of the A string, that is a D, as shown in the second chart.
With the same logic, if you want to play a E7 chord, you have to move the shape until the root at the 7th fret of the A string (which is an E), as shown in the third picture.
In movable chord diagrams you will not find the name of the chord, because it depends on where you place the root (1) of the chord on the fretboard.
In the free ebooks, you find plenty of movable chord shapes that will allow you to play the majority of songs. Click the button below to download it for free: Download The Chords Chart For Free
When learning guitar chords, we have to deal with 2 different aspects: fingers flexibility and strength, and memorization.
Finger Flexibility and strength
In the beginning, playing chords is not easy. There will be string buzzes or fingers that can't reach a fret. Here are some tips for helping you practicing your chords:
Memorizing chord fingerings it's a mix of brain work and muscle memory. We have to arrive at a point at which we don't need to think about where to place fingers, but automatically our left-hand knows where to go. This is the so-called 'muscle memory' and can be gained only with time and practice. Here's a small trick that will help you learn chords new shapes faster:
Guitar Chords Chart Pdf: Conclusions and Helpful Links
Hope you'll find this guitar chords diagram pdf useful, remember that you don't have to know hundreds of chord shapes to have fun with your guitar. Learn a couple of chords every day, apply them by playing your favorite songs, and soon you'll find yourself a true chord master! For more resources on guitar chords and songs, have a look at the related tutorials below.
Download The Chords Chart For Free
Looking to learn about barre chords? You’re in the right place!
In this free guitar lesson you will learn:
Let’s get started.
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So what are barre chords?
A barre chord is a chord where one of our fingers is pressing down more than one string.
If you’ve never played barre chords before, then that probably sounds quite difficult, and it is at first. BUT, like a lot of things, with practice and patience you’ll get the hang of it.
Barre chords in many ways mark our transition from beginner guitarists to intermediate guitarists, so please don’t be put off if you struggle with them at first.
Barre chords aren’t easy.
Why are barre chords important?
You might be asking yourself, “If barre chords are so difficult, why not just stick with ordinary open chords?”
There are some chords that quite simply can’t be played in the open position. Sooner or later, you are going to encounter a song that unavoidably has a barre chord in it.
Barre chords also allow us more options for chords we already know. If we only know one way of playing a chord it can limit our playing considerably.
Our first barre chords
Because barre chords can be tricky, we’re going to start off with the absolute basics of barring before we do anything else.
You know your normal A chord?
(If you don't understand the above image please read our article 'How To Read Guitar Chordboxes In 60 Seconds'. It will make everything clear!)
Normally you’d play that with three fingers… but we’re going to try playing it with just ONE finger.
All we need to do is lie our index finger across all three of the strings and press down.
Like this:
NB: You’ll probably find unavoidably that you end up pressing the high E string down as well. That’s fine. We simply don’t strum that string when we’re barring the A. If you can’t help but strum it, that’s not a problem. It just means you’ve got yourself an A6 chord instead of just an A chord. Jazzy!
Give it a try.
How does it feel? A bit uncomfortable perhaps? Do you find you’re having to press quite hard?
That’s quite normal. Don’t worry. It takes time for our fingers to get used to barring.
How does it sound? Are some of the notes not quite sounding? Are you getting a lot of dead string noise instead of nice clear notes?
Again, perfectly normal.
We have to be patient and allow our fingers time to get used to barring.
Try strumming the chord and arpeggiating it (ie. playing one note at a time).
You’ll probably find the strum is a bit more forgiving than the arpeggio, but the arpeggio will show us exactly which strings aren’t quite being pressed down enough.
It’s important that you don’t hurt yourself when playing barre chords. Allow your finger plenty of rest in between attempts at the chord.
Learn the 12 EASIEST beginner chords with our famous FREE guide
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The D Major 7 Chord
Dmaj7 is basically the same shape as the A, except we’ve moved everything over by one string, so we’re barring the 1st, 2nd and 3rd strings of the guitar.
Give it a try. Try strumming it and arpeggiating it.
You’ll probably find a lot of similarities with playing this chord and the previous chord.
A good exercise can be to practice switching between these two chords.
Try them in a sequence:
| A | Dmaj7 | A | Dmaj7 |
Before you go any further with barre chords, it’s vital to have these two down.
Take your time and don’t try to run before you can walk.
Spend as much time as you need practicing these until you’re happy with them.
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More Barre Chords…
Once you have the A and the Dmaj7 down, a good barre chord to try next is F#m.
F#m looks like this:
The best way to approach the F#m is to first play the Dmaj7 and then reach over with either the 3rd or 4th finger and press down the D string (the 4th string) at the 4th fret.
Give it a try. How does it compare to playing the other chords? Do you find that when you stretch over for that extra note that your first finger tries to follow it? When you try and place your first finger back down does it pull your other finger with it?
This is quite a common problem.
Our fingers instinctively try to bunch together. It takes practice to persuade them to work separately from one another.
One thing you can do to help is to re-think the positioning of your thumb round the back of the neck.
Have a look at how your thumb is positioned when you play a chord.
Does it look like this?
Wrapped right around the back of the neck with the tip of the thumb peaking out over the top?
The problem with this sort of grip is, while it feels stronger in terms of pressing strings down, it does mean we lose a lot of our reach.
To get some of that reach back we want to move our thumb down a bit, closer to the centre of the back of the neck (the ‘spine’ if you will).
We also want to stand our thumb up a bit more so it’s just the print or the tip of the thumb touching the neck. Ideally we don’t want the palm or the heel of the hand touching the neck at all.
Your hand should now look a bit like this:
As you’ve moved your thumb to this position you can probably feel your fingers span out a lot more, allowing us more reach.
The downside is, you might feel you no longer have as much gripping power to press those strings down.
Eventually, you want to get to a stage where you can apply enough pressure to the strings without needing a death grip on the neck.
The reality is you may have to compromise a bit between grip and reach. Try adjusting the positioning of your thumb until you feel you have a good balance between the two.
This is where we have to again stress the importance of patience.
Barre chords aren’t easy.
They take time, so you must take your time. Don’t hurt your fingers by asking too much of them too soon.
Once you’re reasonably happy with your F#m chord then try it in a sequence with the A and the Dmaj7.
| A | Dmaj7 | F#m |F#m |Now let’s look at a major barre chord.
You’re probably used to doing your F chord like this:
What we’re going to try and do is bring that high E string into the chord as well.
The way to do this is to flatten that first finger down so it covers both the B string and the high E string.
Give it a try. How does it feel? How does it sound?
Again, you may be having a lot of the issues we encountered with the earlier chords.
Remember, these issues are perfectly normal and they do take time to resolve, so be patient.
Make sure that you:
Once you’re reasonably happy with the F chord, there’s a nice easy change we can do to practice it.
If you simply lift off the third and fourth fingers, but keep the first and second fingers on, that gives you a Dm7 chord.
You might find this chord a bit easier than the F as it’s nothing like as much of a stretch.
Try changing between the two chords in a sequence, like this:
| Dm7 | F | Dm7 | F |Moving barre chord shapes around the neck.
So, we now know a major and a minor barre chord shape.
The great thing about these barre chords is, we can move them all over the neck, allowing us to play all the major and minor chords.
All we need is a basic grasp of the musical alphabet.
Not familar with the musical alphabet? No problem. Check out this article:Guitar Notes Explained: A Guide For Beginners
Both our major and minor barre chords have root notes on the D string, so it’s the notes on the D string we need to concern ourselves with. Here’s a diagram of the notes on the D string. (4th string.)
Here’s a chord sequence to practice: | F | Gm |Am | Bb |
Let’s try and play it using our two barre chord shapes.
We already know our F, but what about that Gm?
Well, we know our F#m.
What’s the next note on the D string in the diagram after F#?
That’s right. It’s G. To turn our F#m into a Gm, all we need to do is slide it along by one fret to the third fret.
Try changing from the F to the Gm a few times. Now, what about that Am? Again, let’s use the diagram.
We’re on Gm. How far do we have to count up to get to Am?
That’s right. The musical alphabet goes: G G# A. So we need to move the minor barre chord shape up another two frets to the fifth fret.
So far so good!
Try practicing F to Gm to Am a few times before we look at the last chord.
Our last chord is Bb.
It’s important not to be put off by chords that have unusual names. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re difficult to play.
We’re currently on Am. How far do we need to move up the musical alphabet to get to Bb?
That’s right. Just the one fret.
So we’re moving from the 5th fret to the 6th fret. BUT, remember, it’s a major chord we want, not a minor, so we need to switch back to our major shape.
This is important to remember as the difference in sound between a major and a minor chord is drastic.
Now let’s try the whole sequence:
| F | Gm | Am | Bb |
Go as slowly as you need to. Make sure you get the barre chords right above all else.
Make sure you have the right fret and the right shape.
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