Free Video Guitar Lessons: The Open Chords

In this free video guitar lesson, I will teach you how to play some basic open chords. An open chord is a chord that has an open string as one of the main notes. The basic open chords on the guitar are: Em and E, Am and A, D (minor) and D, C and G. The reason that you only play the C and G as open chords with a major note, is that it is a little hard to reach the minor notes on a C and G minor, while still keeping the same open shape, so it is better to play them as barre chords. Anyway, take a look at the free video guitar lessons on the open chords.

Hope you found it easy to learn the open chords from the video guitar lesson above, but let me run over it again. An open E minor chord is played with an open E (the thickest string), then the second fret of the A string, and the second fret of the D string, and all of the other strings are open. The first three notes make a power chord, E,B,E, and then you can change the chord from an open E minor chord to a major chord by putting your index finger on the first fret of the G string. To do that, you have to use your middle and ring fingers for the B and the E. Watch the free video guitar lesson again, and watch what fingers I'm using to play the open chords.


The open chords in this free video guitar lesson are not made for a distorted guitar sound, they only sound good on acoustic guitar, or an electric with a clean amp sound. In another free video guitar lesson, I cover the power chords, which are perhaps the most important chords you will ever learn, if you want to play loud or heavy music with distortion. Stay tuned for my next free video guitar lesson on soloing formulas, which will show you the patterns that are commonly used in solos, once you know the scales. If you don't know any scales, then go back to my previous video guitar lessons, and learn the blues scale, and the major and minor scales, and then learn about the soloing formulas I use.