Guitar chord facts for kids

Ry Cooder plays slide guitar using a special tuning. This lets him play chords by pressing down all strings across the neck.

A guitar chord is when you play two or more musical notes on a guitar at the same time. It's like playing a mini-harmony! Guitars are great for playing chords. They are used in almost every type of music.

However, guitars are a bit different from other instruments. Most guitars have six strings. This means that sometimes, for very big chords, you might not play every single note that belongs in the chord. Also, the way notes are laid out on the guitar's neck (called the fretboard) can be interesting. Sometimes, the notes in a chord aren't played in their exact musical order. You can also play the same chord in many different places on the fretboard. This gives guitarists lots of choices!

How Guitars Are Tuned

Guitars can have different numbers of strings. They can also be tuned in different ways. Most guitars you hear in popular music have six strings. They are usually tuned like this: E-A-D-G-B-E.

The thinnest string, which has the highest sound, is called the first string. The thickest string, which has the lowest sound, is called the sixth string. Knowing this tuning helps you understand how to play different chords.

Images for kids

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  The Who's Peter Townshend often used a theatrical "windmill" strum to play "power chords"—a root, fifth, and octave.

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  This image shows a chord progression with a dominant seventh chord. The G7 chord (G,B,D,F) creates tension that wants to resolve to the C chord.

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  Paul McCartney used an A-major I–IV–V7 chord progression in "3 Legs", which is also an example of the twelve-bar blues.

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  Johnny Marr is known for providing harmony by playing arpeggiated chords. This means playing the notes of a chord one after another, instead of all at once.

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  A barre chord ("E Major shape"), with the index finger used to bar the strings. This means pressing down multiple strings with one finger.

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  Chords have consistent shapes everywhere on the fretboard for each regular tuning, for example, major-thirds (M3) tuning.

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  Robert Fripp builds chords with perfect intervals in his new standard tuning. He doesn't like the sound of thirds in equal-temperament tuning.

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  E5

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  G5

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  G5

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  A Major Chord

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  D Major Chord

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  E Major Chord

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  G Major Chord

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  B Major Chord

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  F Major Chord

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  F Major Chord

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  F Minor Chord