This post will simply include a piece from the book ‘open chords made easy‘. If you have read the extracted lessons from the book, you should be able to read and play the piece.
This piece contains a chord chart and strumming guide.
The melody has also been included, although this is effectively a bonus and is not related to the lessons in this series.
This post includes 37 open chords that are used in the book ‘Open Chords Made Easy‘.
Each chord has a unique number so that you can easily locate a particular chord when playing one of the pieces. This is all explained in the lesson, how to read the strumming guides and chord charts.
37 chords? Yes, that’s a lot. There are really only 15 main open chords, but there are a lot of small variations, which is why so many have been included.
You might already know how to read chord diagrams. If so, you can skip this lesson. However, if you find that interpreting chord diagrams is a bit hit and miss – sometimes you get them right, other times everything is upside-down etc, then you will find this short tutorial quite useful.
Chord diagrams are relatively simple diagrams that tell us how to play a certain chord. Let’s look at a chord diagram for the D major chord:
Repeats are used to save space and reduce clutter. Why write something out five times when you can use repeats? In the book ‘Open Chords Made Easy‘, there are multiple types of repeats that are used.
The first type of repeat is a symbol that looks like a percentage sign. This is a repeat symbol that is used commonly (it is not specific to this site or book) to indicate that the previous bar is to be repeated. We will only be using it in the chord charts and only to indicate that a strumming rhythm is being repeated, not necessarily a chord. If a chord is to be repeated, it is simply written again, although this symbol is often used to repeat chords as well. As you can see in the example, the chords are changing from one bar to the next, but Rhythm 1 is being repeated.
Each piece in the book ‘Open Chords Made Easy‘ contains a rhythm guitar part that is divided into two sections:
A chord chart (as seen below) is a standard way of transcribing the chords of a particular song or piece of music. Chord charts vary in format and depth of detail. The thing that makes the chord charts that are in the book easy to follow, is the inclusion of rhythms with each bar, and the accompanying strumming guide. Look at the example chord chart below and then read the following explanations.
If you read the previous lesson on the basics of rhythm, you should have a good understanding of what rhythm is and how it relates to the beat and the meter. In this lesson, we are going to explore the relationship between rhythm and strumming.
Firstly, strumming, on a basic level, involves playing a certain rhythm by striking the strings using a combination of downward and upward ‘strums’. I know that might seem very simplistic, but on a basic level, that’s what it’s all about.
Any connection (clap, strum etc.) that is played on a number (1, 2, 3, or 4) is said to be played on a down beat. Anything played on an ‘and’ is said to be played on an upbeat (or offbeat).
This lesson is an adapted lesson from the ‘Open Chords Made Easy’ book. You can view the index of lessons from this series here, or purchase the book itself from here.
Therefor: