Guitar Chord Chart
Eighteen chord shapes, drawn in the page rather than served as pictures, each one showing the notes it actually sounds worked out from the open strings. Pick a chord and the diagram, the x02220 fingering, the finger numbers and the note names all come together, so you can see that A major is A E A C# E and that the C# is what makes it major rather than minor. The first eight are the open shapes with no barre in them, the ones worth learning first; the rest are the barre chords, the sevenths and the easier shape most players use instead of a full B. Switch to drop D and the note names are worked out again from the new open strings, flip the diagram for a left-handed player, or print the set you are looking at as a sheet. Nothing is uploaded, and no image is loaded for a chord, so it draws the same offline.
A major · x02220
notes A E A C# E
lowest note A on string 5
open shape, fret 2, 5 strings sounding, 1 muted
Three fingers in one fret box. Crowded at first, and it is the shape every barre chord is built from.
How to read the diagram. The six vertical lines are the strings, sixth (thickest) on the left, and the heavy line across the top is the nut. A number in a dot is the finger that presses there: 1 index, 2 middle, 3 ring, 4 little. A bar drawn across several strings is one finger lying flat over all of them. Above the nut, o means play that string open and x means do not play it at all. The letters under the diagram are the open strings of the tuning, which is why they change when you switch to drop D. Notes are named with sharps throughout, so the third of B major reads D# rather than Eb.
Common questions
- How do you read a guitar chord diagram?
- The six vertical lines are the strings, with the thickest sixth string on the left and the thin first string on the right, as though the guitar were stood up in front of you. The heavy line across the top is the nut, so the first horizontal line below it is the first fret. A dot is a finger pressing that string at that fret, and the number in it says which finger: 1 index, 2 middle, 3 ring, 4 little. A bar drawn across several strings is one finger lying flat over all of them. Above the nut, o means play that string open and x means do not play it at all. The letters printed under the diagram are the open strings of the tuning, which is why they change when you switch to drop D.
- Which guitar chords should a beginner learn first?
- The eight this chart calls the first eight: C, A, G, E and D, then A minor, E minor and D minor. They are grouped together because none of them needs a barre and every one of them leaves at least one string ringing open, so the hand has less to hold down and the chord still sounds full. E minor is two fingers and usually the first chord anybody plays. Between them these eight cover a great many songs written in the guitar's home keys, and four of them, E, A, E minor and A minor, are the shapes the barre chords later slide up the neck. Press First eight in the Show control to narrow the chart to just those.
- Why is the B chord so hard, and is there an easier way to play it?
- B major is B, D# and F#, and only one of those, the open second string, falls under an open string. Everything else has to be pressed, which is why the usual shape is x24442: the index finger lies flat across five strings at the second fret, doing the job the nut does for an open chord, while the ring finger bars three more at the fourth. Two easier shapes are on the chart beside it. B7 is x21202, four fingers and no barre at all, and it stands in for B in a great many songs. The one labelled B easy is x2444x, the same shape with the top string dropped, so the index presses one string at the second fret instead of barring five. Neither is a copy of the barre: B7 adds an A to the chord, and the short shape leaves the top F# off, and the note names under each diagram show exactly what changes.
- Does the chart work for a left-handed player?
- Yes. Press Left handed in the readout and the whole diagram mirrors: the thick sixth string moves to the right of the picture, and the finger dots, the x and o marks and the open string letters all move with it. The printed sheet mirrors too. One thing does not flip, on purpose: the fingering shorthand is still written sixth string first, so B major stays x24442 whichever way you play, because that is how every other chart, songbook and teacher writes it.
- Where do the note names under each chord come from?
- They are worked out, not looked up. Each string's note is its open note moved up by the fret number in semitones, which is what a fret does, so the fifth string open is A, at the second fret it is B, and at the fourth it is C#. That is why switching to drop D changes the sixth string's notes and leaves the other five alone, and why a chord that mutes the sixth string reads the same in both tunings. Notes are named with sharps throughout, so the third of B major reads D# rather than the E flat a songbook might print. The names are pitch classes rather than exact pitches: a chord chart says A E A C# E, and if you want the frequencies you want a tuner.
- Can I print the chord chart on one page?
- Press Print sheet, or use your browser's own print command, and the page prints as a chord sheet: the shapes currently showing, redrawn in black on white with their names, fingerings and notes, four to a row. Choose First eight and you get the beginner sheet on a single page. The tuning and the left-handed setting carry over to the print, and the header says which tuning the sheet was made for. The diagrams are drawn in the page rather than loaded as pictures, so they print at whatever resolution your printer has instead of going blocky.
- Is a chord always played the same way?
- No, and that is the honest limit of any chart. Every chord can be played in several places on the neck, with different fingerings and different notes on top, and players choose between them by what comes before and after. What is here is the common shape for each one, the fingering a teacher would start you on, plus a second or third way to play B because that is the one people get stuck on. The chart also cannot know the reach of your hand: if a stretch is impossible today, a different shape for the same chord usually is not.
Every diagram is a named fingering with its own frets, fingers and muted strings, and the note names under it are computed from standard tuning. It cannot know your tuning or the reach of your hand, and a chord has more than one shape: these are the common ones, not the only ones.