How to Play Guitar for Beginners: The E Chord Has Superpowers

E chord by day. Every other chord by night.

The E chord looks like all the other open chords. Some people call them folk chords because traditional folk songs use these like legos to build and rebuild song after song.

Some call these cowboy chords because with a few simple fingerings and no formal music training, cowboys could sit around the campfire and sing simple guitar songs all night.

We'll call them open chords because they are chords that include some open strings. You press some of the strings and leave the sound of the unpressed strings to ring out and complete the chord. You will find these chords at the center of all easy guitar songs.

The special and extraordinary power of the E chord is that it is easily moved up and down the neck as a bar chord. And with that superpower, it can transform itself into every other major cord.

Of course this would be true about all the open chords, but most of the other "cowboy chords" are too difficult to use as bar chords. They pull your fingers in directions that don't easily turn into music.

So when you learn the E chord, put a little extra time into learning it also as a bar chord and you'll have access to all it's superpowers.

======= How to Play an Open E Chord =======

Get the first two frets of your guitar in focus. (The ones furthest away from your body.) Take a good look at them. The E chord lives right there in those first two frets.

Fingers: You'll be using your index, middle and ring fingers. Take a look at them.

Strings: You'll be pressing on the third string from the floor (G string), the fourth string from the floor (D string) and the fifth string from the floor (A string). Look at those and touch them with any fingers of both hands.. Get clear about which strings you'll be pressing.

======= Placement: =======

The specific placement of your hand to form a chord will always involve three things:

==>> Which finger to use

==>> Which fret to move to

==>> Which string to press

Each note that makes up the chord involves all three. Here is the placement for the open major E chord:

==>> Middle finger - second fret - A string

==>> Ring finger - second fret - D string

==>> Index finger - first fret - G string

======= Trick for fast placement and easy chord changes: =======

==>> Hold your middle finger and ring finger next to each other as if they were taped together.

==>> Place them together (at the same time) on the second fret of string 5 (A string) and 4 (D string).

This is cool -- And by the way, if you stop there, you've got an E minor chord. You'll usually see this written as Em. Strum that a few times and enjoy the deep rich sound of Em.) This is a rich sounding chord that is very easy to play and you will find it in many guitar songs for beginners.

Now, with those two fingers in place, look at where your index finger naturally wants to fall. Right there on the first fret of the 3rd string (G string) is exactly where it wants to go and exactly where it completes the open E chord. How great is that!

Practice that a few times. Hold your ring and middle fingers together in front of you. Train them to hold that position. Then jump into the E chord. Doesn't that sound beautiful?

The open E chord and its variations are some of the most commonly used open chords in the blues on the guitar. Get it down and it will take you through more simple guitar songs than you can count.

That's it for now. Please go practice that and in another article we'll look at how to transform this open E chord into every other chord by making it a bar chord.


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