Open guitar chords - The key to most Bar chords
Nov 29th, 2007 by speedmagus
Beginner guitarists always start by learning Open Chords or beginner guitar chords as they are often referred to.
The limitations of learning only open chords on the guitar are that there only a few keys one can play songs in.
Inevitably, one has to progress to learning how to play bar chords.
Fortunately, most of the bar chords - with the exception of certain advanced chords, are based around the open guitar chords.
What happens with a bar chord, is that the nut of the guitar is replaced by the first finger, thus forming a bar across the strings to compensate.
We can take a simple E chord on the guitar, and move it up 3 frets, place the first finger behind it where the nut would be if it was an E, and hey presto - We have a G Bar Chord.
The same can be done with most open guitar chords.
There are some beginners guitar chords, like the D chord, which won’t work quite as well, but the D chord is basically the first three strings of the C chord, moved up two frets. If one had to take the C chord and move the whole thing up 2 frets while placing the bar behind it, one would have a more accurate and full version of a D chord. Open Chords are great for beginners, but please don’t stop there. The best Guitar Lessons focus around learning all the guitar chords, both open and bar.