Welcome To The Open Chords!
Open Chords Have open strings in them, making them easier to play than some other chord shapes.
The Easiest Open Chords
These shapes are what I give total beginners, open chords that don’t have too many strings involved. Start with E Minor – put your middle finger on the 2nd fret D string and off you go. Here’s how I play the 2 finger shapes for reference
Moving On…
Once you make you way through those easy 3-4 string shapes we can move into the ‘real’ open chords. There are a few other open chords I’ll cover in another lesson but these are all the well known shapes that have been played by countless artists throughout the years. The fingering is important for some of them so check out the pics and video
I would recommend grazing over the shapes them selves for just a little while before starting to play a song. Practice the shapes by themselves, playing each string at a time to make sure they are ringing out nice and clear. The usual culprits for a note not sounding clear is its being muted by another finger or you are not pressing down hard enough.
Pick out a few shapes you like and practice switching between them. Once you are ready check out my Songs That Use Open Chords Lesson to get things rolling.
Once you have these shapes down move on to my Open Chords Part 2 Lesson for more shapes.
Thanks for reading and here is the video