Guitar Chord Chart for Beginners

Learning the open-position chords will enable you to start playing accompaniment to thousands of songs for both electric and acoustic guitar.

Most of the time, these chords are played with a clean, undistorted sound because the distortion effect will bring too much "dirt".

The distorted guitar is usually best played with power chords instead.

Take your time mastering the easy guitar chords below, and you’ll be able to pick up accompaniment by ear for a lot of tunes without much effort. ;)

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Hover over the diagrams to listen to the corresponding audio examples

A minor chord C major chord G major chord E minor chord A major chord A dominant seventh chord E dominant seventh chord D dominant seventh chord F major chord D minor chord G dominant seventh chord A major second suspended chord E major chord D major chord C dominant seventh chord B dominant seventh chord A chart featuring 16 guitar chord diagrams for beginners

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A small image showing how one fretting finger pressing two strings simultaneously with its pad

Note that to play the F major chord, you need to press both the 1st and 2nd strings with your index finger. In order to do so, lean your finger so that it presses the strings with the pad rather than the fingertip, as is usual.

For fun, I’ve arranged the first three rows of the chart in the way that each creates a chord progression you can play straightforwardly from left to right.

For example, play Am → C → G → Em (the first row) and hear some music coming out while learning the chords. ;)

Whenever you need to write down your chord ideas, you can print out blank chord diagrams right from this page or download the PDF sheet and print it. Click here to download.

I will introduce more beginner guitar chords on the guitar chord progressions page.

If you find playing the chords from the chart difficult, but at the same time would really like to start playing some music right away while getting the hang of them, here is a little solution for you: the short video lesson below will teach you how to play a very simple chord progression using extremely simplified versions of the Em and G chords on just the first four strings, using only a single fretting finger for each chord: 

Em xx----
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G xx----
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This video is provided by GuitarTricks, a resource for premium guitar lessons with plenty of high-quality video materials. They often offer a 14-day free trial if you are interested.

You might also check out the videos below on how to play a few basic open chords. In Scene 1, titled "Open Chords Introduction", she plays the Em and G chords. In Scene 2, titled "More Chords", the chord progression is C - G - Fadd9.

Learning Your First Open Chords

Video lessons from jamplay.com

Scene 1 - Open Chords Introduction Scene 2 - More Chords Scene 3 - Chord Variations

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This article was last updated on June 11, 2025