Some Tips in Playing Guitar Chords Associating yourself with guitar chords is a given when you start playing the guitar. After you assessed yourself of your desire to be a guitarist and picked the right guitar for you, learning to play chords is the next step of your new musical journey. Chords are considered the building blocks of guitar playing. Without them, there is practically no way for you to make melodies using your guitar. They are the basics, the essentials, the prerequisites to all skills you may acquire as you play, from covering your favorite songs to creating your own compositions.
Just a little refresher: Chords are categorized into two groups, the minor and the major chords. There are a lot of combinations you can enjoy using the chords but
what you need to acquaint yourself with are those grouped in the so-called CAGED system. Basically, this system is an acronym for the five major guitar chord patterns: C, A, G, E, and D. If you perfect these patterns, it will be a breeze for you to advance in more challenging guitar parts to play. If you have full command of the CAGED system, it will also help you become more experimental with your playing, which is a good thing since that is indicative of musical growth and development. Now, even if it may seem very simple, correctly hitting a guitar chord is quite difficult to do, especially during the first few weeks of playing. For instance, you may find your finger memory, which is very important not just when it comes to nailing simple chords but also other advanced guitar-playing techniques, hard to develop. In the process, you might even injure your fingers if the right procedures are not followed. What’s worse is that the desperation may even surpass physical pain and subject you to emotional distress. Yes, the struggle can be very irritating sometimes. And so, to be able to properly play the guitar chords, you must observe some considerations. In order to solve the problem on struggling to make your fingers remember where to go when playing chords, it will be best to allot quality time for practice. Practice regularly so that retention will be quicker to develop. Play the chords every day until you are comfortable in playing them. Now if your fingertips become sore because of practicing, try to check from time to time if you can still tolerate the pain. If it is too painful, stop at once. Do not force yourself to practice if you experience this since your efforts will be futile. How can you concentrate while nursing a burning ache, right? Just resume practice the next day. Soon you could develop calluses on your fingers, which can act as some sort of protection from this kind of pain. There may come a time when you would hear a buzzing sound when you play. This just means one thing: you are not pressing the strings hard enough, or one of your fingers is accidentally forcing down a separate string. The trick is not to make
each chord ring clearly and instead press all of the strings down against the frets. It may be a challenge in the beginning, but you can achieve this, too, by practicing. So when you find it very pressing and depressing to get your guitar chords right, try to stop for a while, remember these tips, and apply them the next time you play.