All the Chords I Needed to Know I Learned at My First Lesson!

At a recent Cincinnati Homeschool Convention someone asked me: How many chords are there on the guitar? That's a very good question, I replied. Is the answer, six, ten thousand, a million, who knows? What we do know is that there are only five simple open shapes from which all chords originate!

Let's begin by imagining the picture on the cover of a puzzle box. Visualize the picture on the box and see it as a whole picture. See this whole picture as the seven letter of music on your fretboard. When these seven letters of music: A, B, C, D, E, F, G are horizontally connected on the 6 strings and 12 frets of your guitar, the following picture is revealed.

Now, imagine taking a pair of scissors and cutting this whole fretboard picture into five pieces, which we will call fractions. How hard would it be to put together a puzzle if it only had five pieces - Playskool® right? Well, the five puzzle pieces are the five open major chords: E, D, C, A, G which like an anagram can be rearranged into the word: CAGED. You probably know these open shapes already.

Next, let's see how these five shapes become movable on the holisticly connect fretboard. To see that, we need to know that a chord contains at least three different letters that are played at the same time. For example, an F major chord is spelled with three different letters: F A C. However, unlike English, these 3 letters may be arranged in any combination, for example: F A C, A C F, C F A, F C A and the chord will still be F major! In the following example, we'll group the three F major chord letters vertically as we move up the fretboard, and like magic, the five F major chord forms appear!

Perhaps you're having a little trouble seeing them? The following image we help you visualize the five shapes more clearly, by highlighting the three F major chord letters, FAC, into five movable major chord forms.

Congratulations! You can now see all five F major chord forms on your holistic fretboard. And here's the important part, no one knows any more F major chords than you do... there are only five! Now, by simply moving these five major chord barre forms to a different letter location the fretboard, all major chords can easily be played - but that's another lesson...

So, till next time, have some fun connecting your five holistic puzzle pieces ~ I'll be listening.