10 Essential Guitar Chords Every Beginner Should Know

Hello, future strummers! My name's Kiall and I'm here today to help you build a collection of 10 essential chords you should MUST know. 

“Must know” sounds extreme but the truth is, these chords turn up time and time again. You will find them in all genres of music, and it is a great way to start learning how to play real songs straight away, which is the dream, right? So, these chords are a must, so don’t skip them!

To get started, we need to have an understanding of how to read chord diagrams. If you already know this, feel free to skip this section, but if you're unsure, or would like a recap please read on!

Reading chord diagrams

Here's a diagram flow to help support this section. It can take a while to wrap your head around this as a complete beginner, so keep coming back to this as a reference.

Grab your guitar and hold it in front of you so you're looking at the fretboard with the neck vertical. You will see the strings going from the thickest on the right to the thinnest on the left (if it's a right handed guitar). These are the vertical lines on the diagram. Each one of these strings has a name/letter.

E (lephants) A (nd) D (onkeys) G (row) B (ig) E (ars)

The metal bars running across the neck are the frets, which sit on top of the fretboard. These are the horizontal lines like this on the diagram. The fingers are the coloured & numbered dots that you can see sitting on the string and in between the frets. The dot is telling you where to place the finger, and the number is telling you which finger you're placing:

1 = Index finger, 2 = Middle finger, 3 = Ring finger, 4 = Pinky, T = Thumb (Rare in the early stages of playing!)

At the top of the strings you're not fretting you'll see an X or an O. X means don't play this string, O means play the open string. If you're fretting the string you should also strum that one! Finally, the name of the chord will also be on the diagram. It will serve you well to learn the chord names for each shape as they will pop up in countless songs, I promise you! 

The major chords!

Now that we have a firm grasp of how to read a chord diagram we are going to take a look at the three different groups of chords; The Happy Bunch, The Moody Bunch & The Cheats!

Starting with The Happy Bunch, these are your major chords. They have a bright, happy sound to them, and are the foundation of something called the CAGED system. That's an intermediate concept that we won't go into today, but this is where it starts!

We use all sorts of names such as major, minor, suspended etc. to describe the sound of chord types, and tell the musician exactly what to play. All you need to know right now is that major is…. Well, happy sounding. 

For this group, we have 5 chords to learn C major, A major, G major, E major, D major or in shorthand C, A, G, E, D 😉  

The Minor chords

Next up The Moody Bunch; These are your minor chords. The minor chords have a more melancholy, sad sound. They provide a great contrast to our major chords and we MUST have them in our library.

There are just three chords for this group. Most of the time, you will see the chord name being abbreviated from E minor to Em, so whenever you see any letter ranging from A to G and there is a lowercase m next to it, you know it is a minor chord!

The 'Cheat' chords

Finally, we have The Cheats; These chords might not be your best friend today, but soon they will be! In the future, you'll come across the infamous barre chords: F major and B minor. These shapes aren't beginner level but we need to be able to play something if a song calls for an F or a Bm so, let me introduce you to the cheat.

Check out the F major barre chord. Take note of how you have to place your first finger to cover multiple strings (the barre with the 1 on it). Yeah, right!? That ain’t happening today! Instead, we'll simplify things by creating a mini F chord as demonstrated in the images.

And finally, drum roll 🥁🥁🥁 Bm, another barre chord! Like the F barre chord, we're going to substitute it with a more finger-friendly shape. This time we'll end up with a chord called Bm7. Don't worry about the "7" at the end; that's a topic for another day.

Putting it into practice

For your F chord, let's stick with the Fleetwood Mac vibe. I recommend taking a look at "Dreams" and alternating between the mini F chord and the G chord. Keep a focus on strumming the correct number of strings. It's really useful for training your right-hand strumming technique!

Finally, a more modern song to try: “Daylight” by Maroon 5. In the chorus section of the song, we have the chords D, Bm7, G, D. It's a nice way to wrap up and combine a few of the chords from this lesson.

In conclusion 

There we have it, 10 essential chords you must know. Take your time with learning each shape, memorise the names of the chords and you’ll be well on your way strumming to your favourite songs!