Left Handed Guitar Chords

Written by

Dwight H.

April 6, 2023

The 10 Best Left Handed Guitar Chords

Let’s say you’ve recently picked up a lefty guitar, and started getting into the idea of honing your skills, but are still a bit perplexed by how you’re supposed to play chords. Are they the same as their right-hand counterparts? Is there something special you’re supposed to be doing to get them right?

Thankfully, there’s no special trickery involved in playing lefty guitar chords on a lefty guitar — they’re just mirror images of what you’d do with an ordinary guitar.

So, if you were looking at a book that illustrated chord charts in the standard fashion, you’d need only “flip” them around to arrive at the left-handed equivalent.

Let's take a look at the Am7 Chord

The Am7 chord is a perfect chord for beginners. This chord brings a light ambience touch to your guitar playing.

Having a few diagrams specifically for lefties is always going to be quicker and easier, though, so in the interest of helping our left-handed brethren out, we’ve compiled some of the most frequently used open-position chords here for you to start getting in the swing of things.

After you have these mastered, you can start hunting down trickier chords and voicings to advance your level of playing.

Major Left Handed Guitar Chords

We’ll start with the essential, open-position Major chords:

C Major Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 5th string/1st fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 3rd string/2nd fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 2nd string/3rd fret

• Play strings 5 and 6 open

• Mute string 1

D Major Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 4th string/2nd fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 6th string/2nd fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 5th string/3rd fret

• Play string 3 open

• Mute strings 1 and 2

E Major Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 4th string/1st fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 3rd string/2nd fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 2nd string/2nd fret

• Play strings 1, 5, and 6 open

F Major Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 5th string/1st fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 4th string/2nd fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 3rd string/3rd fret

• Play string 6 open

• Mute strings 1 and 2

G Major Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 2nd string/2nd fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 1st string/3rd fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 6th string/3rd fret

• Play strings 3, 4, and 5 open

A Major Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 5th string/2nd fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 4th string/2nd fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 3rd string/2nd fret

• Play strings 2 and 6 open

• Mute the 1st string

B Major Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 6th string/2nd fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 5th string/4th fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 4th string/4th fret

• Place your 4th finger on the 3rd string/4th fret

• Mute strings 1 and 2

Minor Left Handed Guitar Chords

And lest we forget, some of those ever-useful minor chords:

A Minor Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 5th string/1st fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 4th string/2nd fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 3rd string/2nd fret

• Play strings 2 and 6 open

• Mute string 1

B Minor Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 6th string/2nd fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 5th string/3rd fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 4th string/4th fret

• Place your 4th finger on the 3rd string/4th fret

• Mute strings 1 and 2

D Minor Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 6th string/1st fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 4th string/2nd fret

• Place your 3rd finger on the 5th string/3rd fret

• Play string 3 open

• Mute strings 1 and 2

E Minor Chord

• Place your 1st finger on the 3rd string/2nd fret

• Place your 2nd finger on the 2nd string/2nd fret

• Play strings 1, 4, 5, and 6 open

The Secret To Learning Right-Handed Guitar Chords For Leftys

If you're having trouble reading or playing right-handed chords, the secret way is to flip these charts around.

A mirror or even the front camera on your phone turns any regular right-handed chord into a left-handed one.

Tips for Awesome-Sounding Chords

With these chords, the first thing to remember is that you should be playing them with a left-handed guitar. Attempting these on an ordinary guitar will result in some less-than-stellar sounds and you’ll be cursing yourself for trying!

Other than that, though, the same rules apply when playing left-handed chords that you’d use when playing right-handed chords. You want to start slow to reinforce the proper chord shapes, remember to push down firmly on the strings, and start working in rhythms when you feel comfortable switching between different chord shapes. Get started on learning, good luck, and, as always, happy practicing!