4 EASIEST Absolute Beginner Guitar Chords To Play REAL Songs

hello guitar enthusiast lauren bateman here with a very important lesson video on the first four chords you should learn as a beginner now these are simplified chords that i teach my students to help us getting playing music as fast as possible and you're gonna find with just these four chords you'll be able to play thousands of songs now this is an updated hd version of an older video of mine but i'm going to make this even simpler for you so basically what we're going to do is we're going to go over four simple chords that i teach my students and their first or second lesson as guitar students and we use these four chords to play lots of songs such as heart of gold think of zombie by the cranberries perfect by ed sheeran i mean there's lots and lots of songs and you'll find a list of those on my website i'll put a link below where you can go and find those songs so the caveat to this is i'm going to show you four chords i'm actually going to make one of them even easier than my last video and if you stay tuned through the end of this video i'm going to show you how you can use a capo to actually access even more songs with just these four chords so let's get into the actual chords so the first chord we're going to learn is probably one of the easiest it's an e minor chord and we're going to build all of our chords off of this chord so it's very important that we get familiar with this one and know it very well all right so what we're going to do is we're going to we need two fingers all right our first finger and our second finger and our first finger is going to go to the top string of the guitar all right on the second fret so these blocks are called frets so you're going to count up one two frets put your first finger on the top string and then lower it to the fifth string and then what we're going to do with our second string is just put it right below that first finger if you strum all six strings we call this an e minor chord it's a sad chord that's why it's minor all right so let's find that again so we're gonna go to the second fret all right get your first finger move it down to the fifth string second fret and then we're gonna put our second finger right below it on the second fret and that is e minor all right i'm going to repeat that one more time this is a beginner lesson video so i'm going to teach this as if you were a student in my classroom so we're going to repeat things a few times so if you feel like you've gotten enough out of it feel free to fast forward and go to the next section but i'm going to repeat it a few more times just so that you can find it first finger all right fifth string count up to the second fret and put your second finger right below on the fourth string second fret and we're going to strum all the chords this is your e minor chord and this is going to be the foundation for all the other chords that we're going to learn so let's go learn our second chord so the second chord i'm going to show you is a simplified c chord it's only two fingers the normal c chord is usually three fingers but the reason i teach this way is because for a lot of students especially absolute beginners or older students moving three fingers is very difficult so we take this approach and most of my students find it much easier so we're gonna find that e minor chord again so just one more time first finger on the fifth fret oh sorry fifth string go to the second fret put that second finger right below okay and i will do some close-ups after i show you this c chord what we're going to do is we have a pivot point here all right so our second finger is going to stay put the only thing we're going to do is maybe slide it back a little in the fret okay so we're going to lift up our finger and slide this finger back a little bit to give us space so we don't have to stretch so much and this first finger is now going to come down to the second string first fret okay so this is our c chord i'm gonna try as best as possible to just hit the bottom four strings so now to get back to e minor we lift up the first finger just slide this second finger forward a little bit and put the first finger right back on top on the second fret of the fifth string okay let's do that again we're gonna lift up our first finger slide the second finger back a little bit first finger comes down second string first fret and that's your c chord one more time okay first finger up to the fifth string second fret we have e minor and then first finger back down to the second string on the first fret we have a c chord all right so i'm going to go in for close up just so that you guys can see my fingers moving on this if you guys have liked what i've showed you so far make sure to subscribe to my channel because i really specialize in lessons for beginners so that you can see when i release new content songs and tips let's get back into the lesson all right here we are for a close-up this is my guitar neck this is the headstock of the guitar and we have frets one two and three so we're going to find that e minor first fifth string okay second fret and then the second finger is going to go right below on the fourth string okay if you play all six strings that is an e minor chord now to get to that c chord we're gonna lift up the first finger we're gonna slide the second finger towards the headstock a little bit and the first finger is gonna come down to the b string here the second string at the first fret so we have c now to get back to e minor we're gonna just move that first finger back up to the fifth string and then one more time move the first finger to c let's just do it one more time for a good measure here okay so e minor first finger comes up to the fifth string just like that lift up the first finger slide the second towards the headstock first finger comes down right here second string first fret so we have c and e minor c and e minor [Music] one quick note here if you know the e minor and the c chords you can now play a really cool song called eleanor rigby by the beatles which uses just the e minor and the c chords i'll put a link in the description below so that you guys can go check that out now that you're familiar with the c and e minor chord the next chord we're going to add into the mix is going to be our g chord and you guessed it we're going to be starting at the e minor chord again so hopefully by now you know where that chord is but just in case one more time we're gonna take the first finger fifth string second fret second finger right below now the g chord we also have a pivot point on this chord and again g is usually a three-fingered chord these are simplified versions to help get your finger started and build confidence that you can actually do this okay because again like i said i've had lots of people do those three-fingered guitar chords and give up in frustration because it was just too much for them at the stage they were at all right so what we're going to do this first finger now becomes our pivot point all right and we're going to slide it forward all right towards the body of the guitar and our second finger is going to reach up to the top string third fret and we're going to strum the whole thing it's really what we call a g6 chord but we're just going to call it a simple g chord to keep things simple all right and you would strum all the strings now to get back to e minor lift up the second finger slide the first finger back in the fret and put your second finger right back on that fourth string second fret let's go back to the g chord lift up the second finger slide the first finger forward second finger comes up to the third fret on the top string and we strum all right one more time lift up the second finger slide the first finger second finger to the fourth string e minor lift up the second finger now back to g slide the first finger forward top string third fret we have a g chord and i will go in for a close-up all right here i am on my close-up again and we're gonna find that e minor chord all right first and second fingers in the second frets on the fifth and the fourth string we have e minor now to get to that g chord we're going to lift up the second finger slide the first finger towards the body of the guitar second finger comes down on that top string third fret we have g to get back we're gonna slide the first finger and then the second finger just comes right underneath [Music] okay lift slide the first finger forward second finger comes down let's do it one more time back to e minor slide the first finger back second finger down back to g lift up the second finger slide the first forward second finger on the third fret of the top string and we have g hey guys i hope you liked the video don't forget to give me a thumbs up because it helps people like you see my videos more often thanks so much let's keep going so there you go you have your first three chords and usually at this stage what i would do with my students is i would just have them practice going from a g chord to an e minor chord to a c chord back to e minor so it'd be g e minor c e minor g e minor c e minor so forth and so on but i told you i was going to teach you four chords in this lesson so we have one more chord that we're going to learn and this is the chord that i simplified even more from my last video so that we now have a two fingered d chord let's go check that out so a lot of students tend to have trouble playing a d chord they'll play it and it kind of sounds like that so what we're going to do here is we're basically going to play like a d suspended chord okay i think it's a dsus4 and it's going to sound like this it's very open sounding chord now unfortunately we don't have a pivot point to get into this d chord so what we're going to do is we're going to start still at e minor because that's been our home base and you guys are kind of really familiar with that chord by now so we're going to start with the e minor and what we're going to do is we're going to lift up the second finger and then move the first finger down two strings this time all right two strings so you'll be on the third string second fret and now we're going to use our third finger and the third finger is going to play the um third fret of the second string all right and you try really want to try and bend this third knuckle um this knuckle on the third finger so that you don't mute that bottom string all right and you're going to play the bottom four strings and it's a very nice open sounding chords very beautiful chord alright so now we're going to get back to e minor we're going to lift up our third finger move the first finger up two strings second finger comes down all right to get back to that d chord lift up your second finger first finger down one two strings still on the second fret third finger goes to the second string third fret we have a d okay one more time let's go back to e minor lift up that third finger move the first finger up two strings put the second finger down have e minor lift up the second finger okay move the first finger down two strings and then we have the third finger coming right into place on the third fret of the second string and we now have our d chord so let's go in for another close-up so that i can show you guys how my fingers are moving okay here we are in a close-up here so we've got our e minor chord okay again you should know that one by now lift up the second finger move it down two strings third finger comes to the third fret of the second string and you can see how bent my knuckle is here don't have it lie flat or angled like this or you're gonna mute that bottom string okay let's go back to our e minor [Music] lift the second finger down two strings third finger on the second string let's do it one more time lift up that third finger lift the first finger there we go e minor is back in place lift up the second finger move the first finger down two strings third finger comes into play and we have our d chord now to start using these chords and songs ideally what i would have students do is like i said practice switching between the chords so go from e minor to d g to d c to d c to g okay so you're going to want to try all these different combinations because that's what happens in songs it's just different variations of these chords so just a quick example of a song for me to play for you would be something like brown eyed girl so it would be g to c g to d [Music] hey where did we go hear it days when the rain came so i'm doing is just some simple strumming and it's going g c g d so that's example of a song that uses these chords like i said i'll put a link to my website so you can go see some of the other chords so i told you i was going to give you an extra little bonus secret in this video that i didn't give you in the last video and that was how do we play even more songs with just these four chords and i'll show you that using a capo so this is my trusty kaiser capo and all it is is a clamp if you don't have one of these and you're beginner i'd recommend getting one because like i said you can play a lot more songs with just these chords so usually chords are grouped together what we call keys and they're basically just families of chords that sound good together that's why i taught you g c d and e minor because there's a lot of songs that just use those four chords well another great key to learn would be the key of a which usually has the a chord a d chord an e chord and an f sharp minor don't worry about that we're not going into music theory here i'm just going to show you how to apply this okay so songs that you know use the key of a would be something like leaving on a jet plane um folsom prism blues walk the line there's lots of songs that use the key of a but what happens if you don't know those chords or you're beginner and you just know these chords i'm going to show you a little trick so this capo can be clamped at the second fret of your guitar and all you do is you just put the big end the big end clamped over the strings and we call this capoing at the second fret that capo is at the second fret so now we have our g chord we have our d chord we have our c chord and we have our e minor chord and you hear that they sound very different than they did before because of our capo so now if you see a song that has the chords a d e and f sharp minor you know a song like uh stand by me by benny king that would be a good example when you see an a chord you would play your g chord when you see f sharp minor you would play e minor okay so a chord is g f sharp minor is e minor now for the d chord whenever you see a d chord all you have to do is play your c chord and when you see an e chord you play your d suspending chord alright so let's take an example of a song like stand by me so just to show you quickly with the song like stand by me which is in the key of a we're gonna put it with these chords all right so instead of ain't gonna play g but darling darling stand by me by me oh stand stand by me so there's a quick example so now i've even opened up even more and more songs to you with just four simple chords if you guys enjoyed this video enjoyed my teaching style i do have a full course that is a seven level step-by-step beginner guitar system how to get you going and having more fun on the guitar playing the songs you love we'll go over chords and strumming so if you want to check that out i'll put a link below the video thanks so much for watching this video i hope you got a lot out of it don't forget to like to comment and subscribe on this video it really helps me out and youtube's going to pop up a couple more videos over here i hope you enjoy it and i hope to see you guys in another lesson video

Channel: Lauren Bateman

Views: 127,316

Rating: 4.9513273 out of 5

Keywords: lauren bateman guitar lessons, lauren bateman beginner guitar lessons, absolute beginner guitar chords, easy acoustic guitar chords, easy guitar chords, guitar for beginners, guitar lessons for beginners, guitar chords for beginners, acoustic guitar chords for beginners, acoustic guitar chords that sound good together, acoustic guitar chords lessons for beginners, acoustic guitar chords tutorial, easy acoustic guitar chords for beginners, easiest guitar chords, guitar chords

Id: WGIcfDCWysQ

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020