If you want to play as many of your favorite songs as possible, learning the basic chords of which there are 10 or 15 will help. The background of songs are made up of chords which are accompanied by other instruments. Now, you are probably asking what is a chord. The chord is three or more musical notes which are played together.

On a guitar this would mean three strings are strummed if there are three notes in the chord you want to play. On a guitar the number of notes that may be played in a chord is at the most six because this is the number of strings. There are three groups of chords - Minor, Major and Seventh. Of these three each one has its own mood. The minor chords are melancholy. The major chords are steady and the seventh chords are upbeat and less stable.

There is no standard number of chords that everyone can agree on but the general feeling is there are 8 to 18 chords that anyone who is going to play guitar should know. These chords should be the first ones you learn because they are used in basically everything you will be playing. When you learn these chords you can play rock, country or jazz and enjoy learning many songs.

Ok, what are the basic chords? The must learn ones for beginners are the minor and major chords of E,A,D and C and G major chords. The way these chords are played is by at least one string in the chord not being pressed down. This is called an open chord. Frets are what you do when the fingers on your left hand hold the strings down and the right hand strums the chord.

The easiest chords to learn for a beginning player is the open chord. Basic chords consist of Am, A, C, Dm, D, Em, E, F and G. When playing these chords if you use a guitar chords chart you will see exactly where your fingers are supposed to be on the guitar to play the chord. Newbie guitarists often use this method to teach themselves to play.

One of the most used methods of teaching the chords is by families. The family is mixed to play chords that are the basis of many songs that people play today. By learning the chords in this manner the learning is more fun and each one is learned in a sequence. This makes it easier to remember them as they are learned. Learning the families will allow you to learn and play music for yourself faster.

There are many songs that are based on three chords. The process of studying and trying every chord you can find is going to do nothing more than confuse you. When learning to play the guitar for the first time mastering the easy chords is the step you need to learn in order to start playing right away. There are some places that have over 1200 chords which is by far too many for the beginning player and probably for many accomplished players.

If you want to be able to start playing in a few days, trying to learn all of these chords is not going to help. Using the basic guitar chords chart will allow you to look at the information until you learn it and you will know where your fingers are supposed to go and the music will be flowing in a few days.