Wanting to pick up the guitar quickly, but nothing's worked for you in the past?
Well, these 18 chords are easy to play and transition between and can be used to play thousands of popular songs.
With more than 2,000 chord possibilities, it's hard to know where to start if you're a beginner. I know it was for me. I learned chords as I needed them, from one song to the next, which is not a great system, because you never end up learning any of these chords very well. All of your effort is being spread across so many chords, that it takes longer to learn anything.
So I want to help you know where to begin with chords. If you focus your efforts on learning these, you'll have a large library of songs you can play.
The Chords
Here is the list of the 18 chords, broken up into 3 chord families. You can get this list along with chord diagrams by downloading the Hobby Guitar Ebook.
G CHORD FAMILY
G, Cadd9, D/F#, Em, Am7, Bm7
E CHORD FAMILY
E, A2, B, C#m, F#m, G#m
C CHORD FAMILY
C, F/C, G, Am7, Dm, Em
More than 1 way to play a chord
There are multiple ways to play a C chord, for instance. A chord is simply a combination of notes, and with 6 strings at 12 frets each, that's a lot of possible combinations. I like to teach chords that fit well within the family they belong to. They have similar shapes to their family members, which makes for easy transitioning and a more unified sound. This isn't a rule set in stone, it's just the way I like to do it, and it's the way I wish I learned when I started out.
I hope you enjoy and get something useful out of it!