Chords for Guitar Lessons for Beginners: Episode 1 - Play Your First Song in Just 10 Minutes! 🎸

[F] So you finally found some time to [Cm] learn how to play [A] guitar!
Or at least I'm [Em] assuming so since you clicked on my video.
Thanks for that by the way.
Hi my [F] name is Ellen and I make free guitar tutorials [C] right here on YouTube.
And if you [G] stick with me, I promise you'll be playing your very first song
by the end of this [Dm] 10 minute video
with only 2 [Cm] of the most popular chords used in [G] a lot of different popular songs.
So make sure to stay tuned to see what song that's gonna [Dm] be.
Well, there's no time like the [Gm] present
so go ahead [C] and dust the cobwebs [G] off of your 6 string and let's get it tuned up.
So you're quickly gonna learn that one of the most important things
that has to happen before you can play your guitar is to make sure it's in tune.
There are so many free apps you can download to help tune your guitar
and I'll link a bunch of them below.
But in [N] this video today, we're gonna be using GuitarTuna.
If your guitar is already in tune, make sure to skip to this time here so that we can move on.
Alright, once you have your app open, go ahead and place it next to your guitar strings.
Alright, so these babies over here by the head of your guitar,
those are called your tuners, okay?
These are your tuning pegs and this is what we're gonna use to tune your guitar.
So basically the way that this works is each of these tuning pegs is connected to a string.
So we're gonna start with this very top string closest to you, that's our E string.
And if you have your app open and [Em] you pluck that string,
_ it'll tell you whether you're too high or too low.
So you can see [Eb] here I am too low.
So all we need to do to fix that [E] is you are going to either turn your peg
left or right to make it higher and lower.
So go ahead and experiment.
_ _ _ _ _ See how mine's going higher?
_ So go ahead and keep twisting until that app tells you you're in tune.
_ _ _ _ So again, I'm using Guitar Tuna, but most other apps work this way as well.
So keep twisting left or right until each of those strings gives you a green light.
_ [A] _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ _ [E] _ Hey, nice to see you're still with me.
I'm glad to see someone [N] with more than a two-minute attention span.
Kids these days, am I right?
But I don't want to push my luck, so let's go ahead and jump into the next section
and learn how to play your very first chord.
Alright, so first let's go ahead and talk about the names of these strings.
Starting with the side closest to you, this is our low E string and it goes E-A-D-G-B-E.
But no worries, you don't have to memorize this now.
I will leave this on screen for you for the rest of this tutorial.
Alright, next let's go ahead and look at the neck of your guitar.
You'll see these metal bars throughout the neck.
Those are called your frets.
And this is important because this is going to tell you where you want to put your fingers.
And you never want to put your fingers directly on these metal bars, on these frets.
You want to put your fingers behind them, alright?
So the way that we're going to talk about these frets is with numbers.
We've got first fret, second fret, third fret.
Alright, so let's go ahead and test this new skill.
If I told you to put your middle finger on the third fret of the low E string,
where do you think that would be?
_ _ That would be right here.
Good job.
Sorry to go a little Dora the Explorer on you, but let's keep going.
So if I told you to put your pointer or index finger on the second fret of the A string,
where would that be?
_ _ You got it.
So we're already halfway there.
We got two of our fingers on.
Now there are a lot of chords that you'll learn as a beginner that you can play with just two fingers.
But I'm going to challenge you guys and have you play with the other two fingers as well
because I know you could do it.
So let's go ahead and do our ring finger next.
So our ring finger is going to go on the third fret of the B string.
So that would go here.
And then your pinky is going to go on the third fret of the high E string.
So right next door, right there.
All right.
So you've got your G chord down.
And the reason I'm showing you this four finger chord first is because it's one of the most popular chords.
You'll see it in almost every single song ever.
So congratulations on already learning one of these harder chords first.
So once you have your G chord down, now you just want to make sure that it sounds right.
And all we have to do for that is strum our guitar.
So I'm using a pick.
If you don't have a pick, you can use your thumb.
If you don't have a thumb, you can use one of your nails, you know, just make do with what you got.
But all you got to do for [G] strumming is _ that. _
All right.
So go ahead and make sure your G chord sounds like my G chord.
_ _ _ _ How did that sound?
Hopefully pretty good.
If you [Ab] heard some buzzing in there, that's probably because you're not pressing down hard enough on your strings.
So go ahead and just adjust your fingers a little bit and make sure you're pressing down hard enough.
And on the other end, if you have, you know, white tips on your fingers,
you might be pressing down a little bit too hard and that's not necessary either.
So just make sure you're putting an even amount of pressure on these strings.
And also, if you find that your hand's a little bit uncomfortable in this position,
don't worry.
I guarantee you 99% of the other people watching this video agree with you and are in the exact same position.
Playing guitar can be a little bit weird because our hands aren't normally in this position.
So make sure that if your hand starts to feel a little bit strange, just to take a break and step away.
So lots of songs out there use some really complicated strumming patterns,
but I'm going to show you one that's really easy but super applicable.
So now all I want you to do is [G] instead of strumming down once, _
we're just going to do that four times in a row.
One, two, three, four.
_ [N] So go ahead and do that with me.
Ready, [G] go.
One, two, three, four.
_ _ _ [N] Congratulations, you just played your very first strumming pattern.
All right, so go ahead and pause this video and practice that four down strum strumming pattern
a few more times on your own.
And then when you're ready, we can go into the next part of this lesson.
So the next thing I feel like beginners struggle with is going to be transitioning chords.
So right now we've got our G chord laid down, but what do you do from there?
Well, let me go ahead and show you the next chord I'm going to teach you in this series.
And I've thought this out very carefully.
So for the next few lessons, we're only going to have to move just a few fingers
to play completely different chords.
Case in point, let's go ahead and move into our second chord.
So right now we've got our G chord on, and the next chord I want to teach you is so super simple.
All you want to do is take your middle finger that's on the third fret of the low E string
and your pointer finger that's on the second fret of the A string,
and you're just going to move each of those fingers down one string.
All right, so now your middle finger is on the third fret of the A string
and your pointer finger is on the second fret of the D string.
Did you see that?
It's a little easy to miss because it's such a small movement,
but we're just going from this to this.
One, two, like an eye doctor.
One, two.
All right, so that's just how simple of a movement we're doing.
This next chord is our C add nine chord, which is basically a variation of a C chord.
So to go from our G to our C, look at that.
Super simple.
If you need to, go ahead and pause the video and practice switching your fingers back and forth
until you feel comfortable with this movement.
So now we just want to move into strumming with our C add nine chord,
and what we're going to do for this is exactly what we did with our G chord.
We're just going to do four down strums like this.
[C] _ [Em] Two, three, four. _ _ _
Something to keep in mind here is our C add nine chord is a little bit different than our G
because we're not going to want to strum this top string here,
but no worries if you're a beginner and that's a little bit hard for you.
If you do end up strumming that whole all six strings for C add nine,
it actually sounds pretty okay, so no worries there.
All right, so again, I want you to pause this video right now
and practice that four down strum with that C add nine [G] chord
until you feel pretty comfortable with it.
So now let's go ahead and tackle the probably number one thing
that most beginners have trouble with, which is switching between chords.
So go ahead and put your G chord back on.
So remember that's when your middle finger and your index finger are on the top two strings.
And we're just going to strum down four times.
One, two, three, four.
_ Beautiful.
And now after you've done that four times, we want to switch to our C add nine chord.
So again, make sure to move those top two fingers down one string each.
All right, and then the pattern's the same.
[C] _ [Em] One, two, three, four.
All right, great.
And then [Ab] once you've done that, you just go back to G.
So move those two fingers [G] back.
One, two, three, four.
Then back to C add nine.
_ [Em] One, two, three, four.
[G] G, two, three, four.
Switch [Em] to C add nine.
Two, three, four.
Back [G] to G, _ two, three, four.
[Em] And back. _ _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ So go ahead and hop in _ _
_ [Em] anytime you're ready. _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ We're just going back and forth between _ [Em] _ G and C add nine. _ _
_ [G] _ One, two, three, four.
[Em] C, two, three, four.
You [G] got it. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Em] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ Do you guys recognize something? _ _
_ [Em] _ _ I think you're playing your very first song right now.
_ [G] _ _ _ Don't believe me? _
_ [Em] _ _ Watch this. _ _
_ [G] _ _ Every rose has [Em] its thorn. _ _ _ _
[G] But again, _ every knife has [Em] its thorn.
_ _ Don't [G] flag, _ every cowboy [Em] sings a sad, sad song.
_ _ [G] _
_ Every rose has [Em] its thorn.
_ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _
We are never, ever, [Em] ever _ getting back together.
[G] _ We are never, ever, [Em] ever _ getting back together.
[G] Here is the church and here is this people.
[Em] We sure are cute for two ugly people.
[G] I don't see what anyone can see in anyone [Em] _ else. _ _
_ _ [G] _ Bye. _ _ _
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ Hey, congratulations to the [C] five of you who made it to the end of [G] this video.
And also congratulations on playing through your very first song [F] on the guitar
in [Db] less than 10 [Bb] minutes.
I hope you're [C] proud of yourself for doing [G] something like that because I know I sure am.
[C] And if you liked this video and you [F] thought it was helpful,
make sure to give me a thumbs up [Dm] down below and [C] subscribe to my [G] channel so you don't miss out.
But I know it can be a little [C] hard to convince people to [F] subscribe.
I mean, you've only known me for [Dm] 10 minutes, but that's [C] okay.
If you don't want to [G] subscribe, at least make sure to check out [C] the second episode in this series.
And [F] I will slowly but surely be teaching you how to play [C] your guitar [G] in little 10 minute digestible [C] video by.
So I hope this [F] video helped and I hope to see you in the next