Guitar For Dummies
Book image
Explore Book Buy On Amazon

Following are chord diagrams for 96 of the most widely used guitar chords. The chords are arranged in 12 columns from C to B, for all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Each of the eight rows shows a different quality — major, minor, 7th, minor 7th, and so on. So if you're looking at a piece of music that calls for, say, a Gsus4 chord, go over to the eighth column from the left and then down to the sixth row from the top.

Columns 1–6
Columns 1–6

Left-hand fingerings appear immediately below the strings (1 = index, 2 = middle, 3 = ring, and 4 = little). An O above a string means to play the open string as part of the chord; an X above a string indicates it isn't part of the chord and shouldn't be played. A curved line means to play the dots (fretted notes) immediately below the line with a barre.

Columns 7–12
Columns 7–12

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book authors:

Mark Phillips is a former director of music at Cherry Lane Music, where he edited or arranged the songbooks of such artists as John Denver, Van Halen, Guns N??? Roses, and Metallica.

Jon Chappell is a multistyle guitarist, arranger, and former editor-in-chief of Guitar magazine.

This article can be found in the category: