In this lesson I am going to teach you how to read a chord diagram. Being able to read a chord diagram is good for when you want to play a song that has mostly chords, just strummed. And also, for fingerpicking. (I will explain this later in this lesson.)
With a chord diagram you will only see about four frets at a time. Also, the numbers on the diagram are your finger number instead of the fret number. In the diagram, if you see a '0' it is an open string. If you see an 'x', you do not play that string. Rarely you will see a 't', which means thumb. These are only on complex chords. I will show you the basics.
Sometimes, when you are looking at the chords for a song, it will show the chord diagrams at the top or bottom of the page, and in the text it will simply have the chord names. Basically you make sure you know the chords they have, and then go at it. Often times it is a chord you will already know, except it has one or two different notes. Just check it out before hand.
You should notice that it is the same chord, except on different frets. Notice, on the second one, that it tells you the starting fret. (in this case, the 5th fret.) That means your first finger is on the 5th fret. Its that simple.
Now I will show how it can be used in fingerpicking tabs. Again, it will probably just say the name of the chord above the tab, and have the actual chord diagram at the top or bottom of the page, so for this example I will use the chord from the diagram above.
