What if I said that after learning just two chords, you can play absolutely all the songs? All you need is the ability to clamp the barre and knowledge of the scale.
Important!
Two chords are more than enough
The fact is that in music there are 2 large groups of chords: major and minor. We will not go deep into theory, the only difference between them is the mood that they convey. Major chords sound fun, while minor chords sound sad. If you didn't know this, just accept this fact and read on.
Since childhood, many have known that there are 7 notes in the world: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si. I hasten to upset you - this is only partly so. There are intermediate notes between some of them, they are called sharp or flat. These are the same black keys on the piano. And if you put all the notes together, you get as many as 12 notes - they form a scale. In order to play all the chords, we need to memorize it.
C, c sharp, re, re sharp, mi, fa, f sharp, salt, g sharp, la, la sharp, si
In international designation, it looks like this:
# - sharp, b - flat.
C - do, D - re, E - mi, F - fa, G - salt, A - la, B - si
The scale itself:
C - C # - D - D # - E - F - F # - G - G # - A - A # - B and so on in a circle. That is, B is always followed by C.
C - Db - D - Eb - E - F - Gb - G - Ab - A - Bb - B
These series are equivalent to each other, that is, C # and Db are the same note. What does it mean? Everything is very simple. This note is intermediate between the notes C and D. That is. it is higher than C and lower than D. If we say that we are raising a note, usually a raising sign is added to it - a sharp. If we lower the note, we assign the lowering sign - flat. In this case, we lowered D or raised C and got the same note.
This is good, of course, but why complicate things so much? This is due to the key of the melody. If the key has sharps and we have to play that very intermediate note - it will be designated as C #, but if the key is in flats - it will look like Db.
Learn the first two chords
Let it be E and Em. These are chords from the note E. A small digression: if you see a LITTLE m after the name, this is a minor chord and it will sound sad.
Press the 4th and 5th strings at the 2nd fret for an Em chord.
Add 1 fret on string 3 to this construction for an E.
How to play any chord
Now we have to see how far the desired chord is from the initial one (in our case, this is E / Em).
- Count the number of steps that need to go from the initial chord to the desired one
- Hold the barre at the fret corresponding to the number of steps passed
- Build an initial chord from this barre
Let's say we want to play a G chord. It is 3 positions higher than E. Therefore, we have to hold down the barre at the 3rd fret and then "place" the E chord from that barre.
Let's build another one by the same analogy: C # m.
- He is 9 places higher than Em
- Clamping the barre at the 9th fret
- We build a "base", i.e. Em
P. S. By this analogy, it is also possible and necessary to build from other open chords. For example, Am, A, A7.
