Welcome to my introductory lesson that will cover my philosophy about the basic guitar chords. Before we begin, make sure that you’ve gone through my guitar warm up lesson. It is absolutely vital that you warm-up for at least 5 minutes every day. Do not blow this off. It is absolutely crucial that you do exercises that will strengthen your fingers, hands, and forearms. These exercises make you stronger, faster, and the ability to play longer.
With that said, let us begin…
The first thing I want you to know is that I’m not going to sit here and write about a bunch of chords that are great to play. I’m going to give you tips on playing chords so that you can understand what you need to practice in order to play them well. Keep in mind that all music is built around chords which are built from scales. So, in order to be a great country guitar player, it is important to master both scales and chords.
So what exactly is a chord?
Well, I am glad you are asking that question (you are asking that, right?). Remember how I mentioned chords being built from scales? A chord is 3 different notes from 1 scale played together at the same time. When you strum these 3 notes, it will create a nice sounding harmony that is pleasing to the ear.
In order to play a chord, you will need to learn how to press down 3 different strings at once. Now do you see why I am making you practice that warm-up everyday? You will have a very tough time pressing down 3 different strings with 3 fingers at the same time if you do not develop your fingers with the warm-up.
You see, most people sit down with the guitar for the first month and try to only learn chords. It’s what I did. It’s what 95% of beginning country guitarists do. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to play music, but I created this site to make you a good country guitar player. In doing so, you’re going to have to follow my advice. No short cuts.
So I recommend that you do the warm-up at a minimum of 5 minutes per day. However, I would prefer if you would practice the warm-up until your hands are sore to the point where it hurts to play. That is when you know you have reached your threshold. At this point, you can now start studying chords, scales, theory, tabs, etc. anything that you want.
By doing the guitar warm-up every single day, your skill level is going to surpass every beginner that isn’t doing the warm-up tremendously. What I am saying is that you are going to be better than 95% of the other guitarists out there that started playing when you did.
I hope I’ve ingrained into your head how important the warm-up is. You’re probably sick of me talking about it already! I’m glad that you took the time to read this. From this point, we can move on to me actually teaching you guitar chords which I will be doing in the next lessons.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Very nice site about country guitar! I love the articles you have here. Keep it up!
Your website is faultless and entirely viewer-friendly. I compliment you for emphasizing the importance of warm-up exercises before playing the guitar. Most beginners find it difficult to play for long hours. I believe warming up will increase guitarist’s endurance in playing the guitar.
That’s some quality basics there, already knew some of that, but you can always learn more about country guitar. Thanks for providing this great information. Keep it up!
@chels I know what you mean, its hard to find good help these days for learning guitar. People now days just don’t have the work ethic they used to have. I mean consider whoever wrote this post, they must have been working hard to write that good and it took a good bit of their time to learn country guitar as well. Keep up the good work.