There are 3 main obstacles to learning guitar chords. All beginners have to face and overcome these obstacles if they want to be able to play the guitar and sound good. Briefly, these hurdles are learning to read and understand a basic chord chart, learning the chords to your favorite songs, and developing the ability to play the songs and chords while singing or thinking about a trip to Boston.

The first big hurdle is simply learning to make sense of a basic chord chart. Chord diagrams are pictures of the guitar neck that will show you where to place your fingers so you know how to play the chord correctly and easily. Basically it shows the strings from thickest to thinnest with the thickest at the bottom of the graph or as the first line to the left of the graph. The dots or numbers on the chart describe where to put your fingers. So the horizontal lines are the actual frets on the neck, if there is a number behind it it means you should place that finger on that fret. Sometimes they put a black dot on a fret and then at the bottom of the chart they have a number that tells you which finger to put on that fret. Fingers are number 1 – 4 starting with the index finger as 1 and the little finger as 4.

The next big hurdle is figuring out the chords to your favorite songs. This really is the best way to learn guitar chords. The easiest way to do this is to go online and look up some of your favorite songs and chords. It’s actually very easy to find the chords to your favorite songs, so it should be no big deal. What you want to do from here is start practicing the chords of the song one or two at a time until you can play them easily. You need to put together a little routine where you play the first chord and then the second chord and then come back to the first. Repeat this every day until you can easily play the first two chords. Then you add a third chord and repeat with the second and third chords of the song. Follow this process throughout the song and you’ll be playing it in no time.

The final and most important hurdle to overcome is developing the ability to play all the chords without even thinking about them. This is called muscle memory and the truth is that it takes a long time to develop. It can usually take four to six months to get to the point of playing the chords without having to think about them. It may seem like a long time, but remember that every guitarist had to go through this same process to learn guitar chords.