Learn the best guitar chords, how to read guitar chords, and how to play guitar chords. Easy step-by-step lessons for beginners. Want to check out the lessons?

Guitar Chords Chart

If you want to learn to play guitar well, then getting a few chords under your belt should be a top priority. These "building blocks" of rhythms and harmonies are an integral part of the language of music, so the more you can pick up, the more you're expanding your proverbial vocabulary (and your ability to "speak" through your instrument).

Basic Guitar Chords

Which chords should you start with, though, if you're a beginner player?

That's the topic we'll be covering today. We're going to walk through eight basic guitar chords how you should be playing them:

Easy Guitar Chords

These 11 easy guitar chords we've assembled are as simple as they come, and a great place for a beginner to start:

Guitar Barre Chords

Barre chords, also known as Bar Chords, are the bane of many a new guitar player. Which isn't to say they aren't useful, mind you -- bar chords are an important part of every guitarists' arsenal. If you're looking to put a unique sounding twist on some of the open-position chords you know, playing said chords in "bar form" is a useful trick.

Guitar Chord Progressions

Few chords, no matter how pretty they sound in isolation, are played that way in actual songs. It’s much more common for songs to group several chords together into guitar chord progressions to develop an interesting sound.

Common Chord Progressions

The first thing you’ll need to remember is that for every chord progression, there is a “root note,” also known as the “tonic.” For the purposes of our lesson today, we’re going to use “C” as our root, exploring several chord progressions in this key.