When I first started learning acoustic guitar I would just choose whichever of the two guitar chords I found easiest to play, as I thought the notation was just giving me two possible chord shapes. This was not the case.

A normal guitar chord is made up of 3 different notes. The root note of the chord will usually be the lowest note. Sometimes though the root note will not be the lowest note. One of the other two notes of the chord will be. This is what we call an inverted guitar chord.

Unfortunately acoustic guitar strumming is not an exact science. Unlike a lot of lead guitar techniques guitar strumming you will have to work at consistently, if you want to impress anyone. A really good acoustic guitarist can take take a strumming pattern and make it sound effortless and easy. This is achieved by what you would call ‘loose’ playing. Ironically to achieve that ‘loose’ playing style requires a lot of practice and effort. Otherwise your playing will just sound sloppy and messy.

The key is learning to control strokes to the point of hitting only a couple of strings each time and swapping between the bass and treble strings can be much more interesting to listen to and really liven up your acoustic guitar playing.

Diminished chords have a sound similar to a lot of the Beatles music during the Sgt Pepper era. It’s almost like a strange drugged out type of sound.

Diminished Chords

Diminished chords are strange chord indeed.  To begin with there are only 3 of them. Have a look at the diagram below. This is the C diminished chord shape. It is also D# diminished, A diminished and F# diminished.

Diminished Chord

Diminished chords can be named after any of the notes in the chord. There are four notes in each diminished chord, so each chord can be called 4 different names.

There are also no open strings in the chord so you can use the diminished chord shape in the same way as a barre chord.

If you move the diminished chord shape up one fret it becomes E diminished, Bb diminished, C# diminished or G diminished.

If you move it up another fret it will be F diminished, B diminished, D diminished, Ab diminished.

Moving one more fret it will be Eb diminished, A diminished, C diminished, F# diminished. These are same notes from the first chord shape. Diminished chords repeat themselves every 3 frets

If you want to learn exactly when to use diminished chords check out this detailed post on our sister site – diminished chords

What Is The 12 Bar Blues Chord Progression?

The 12 bar blues are one of the most common chord progressions in western music.  The 12 bar blues are usually written on 3 lines. Each of the 3 lines is subdivided into four bars. There are 4 beats in every bar of the progression.

Normally the 1st, 4th and 5th chords of the key are used for the twelve bar blues,  but there are plenty of variations to this. If you don’t know what this means it is explained below.

The 12 Bar Blues in A

To understand the 12 bar blues you are going to use the key of A. The twelve bar blue sin A is one of the most common version of the progression played by guitarists.

To learn the twelve bar blues in A you need to be able to play the A major, D major and E major guitar chords. You’ll also need a basic understanding of guitar scales.

If you look at the scale of A major you will find that A is the first chord of the scale, D is the 4th chord of the scale and E is the 5th chord of the scale.

The twelve bar blues uses the 1st, 4th and 5th parts of a scale in the chord progression.

You don’t need to worry about chord variations like 7th chords and 9th chords for the 12 bar blues in this lesson. You will about that in future posts.

For the key of A the most common version of the 12 bar blues chord progression will look like this. The ‘|’ between the letter indicates a bar line. Each letter means one strum on your guitar.

| A A A A | A A A A | A A A A | A A A A |

| D D D D | D D D D | A A A A | A A A A |

| E E E E | D D D D | A A A A | E E E E |

Learning chord shapes can be sometimes be a lot harder than learning guitar scales. It’s not easy to build correct technique and speed up your chord changes but a few helpful tips can speed up your progress significantly

Building Finger Strength

One of the reasons acoustic guitar is so difficult when you first start playing is that you have enough strength in your fingers to keep the chord held down properly. There are ways to build your finger strength though.

When I first started playing guitar I had the craziest teacher. One of the oddest things he ever told me to do was to practice playing rhythm guitar while wearing a pair of tight gloves.

At the time I didn’t understand why, but now I realise he had me do this to build finger strength.

As you can imagine it is extremely difficult to play a clean guitar chord when you are wearing gloves. The strength required to actually fret the notes of the chord, especially on an acoustic guitar is very high.

Although I wouldn’t advise playing guitar wearing gloves, it did work for me and my finger strength increased dramatically over a very short space of time.

The real problem with building finger strength is that if you do not approach it as a training regime you can cause actual damage to your hands.

You should never over stress muscles and tendons of your hands for long periods as this can cause tendinitis. Ask any guitarist that has suffered this affliction to learn just how much it hurts.

The best way to build finger strength is not by playing the guitar, but by using a specialist exercise device, like a set of weights for your fingers, called a grip-master.

The device fits in your hand and has a set of four finger rests. Each rest can be depressed individually.

These are available in good music shops and are ideal for building finger strength. I used to spend 2 hours a day using one of these gadgets, on the train to and from work.

Playing With Rhythm

Once you have a regime in place to begin building finger strength you need to start looking at the way you actually play rhythm. 

It’s important to realise that you only need to lift your fingers from the fret board by a couple of millimetres to make a chord change. Don’t waste time lifting your fingers too high or removing them from the neck entirely, simply stop fretting the current chord by lifting your finger tips enough to stop the note sounding and then move to the new chord shape.

Practice this technique alongside your strength building exercises and you will find your chord changes become faster, smoother and cleaner in a very short period of time.

Here’s The Story…

One group wants to learn all the theory and scales before ever playing any song and the other group just wants to play and learn as they go along.

I don’t know about you, but i was always in the second group.  There’s plenty of time for learning scales and theory later. When I first got my acoustic guitar I just wanted to play something.

So, how do you go from complete beginner to playing lots of songs very quickly. Luckily you can use what’s called the 3 chord trick. You’d be surprised at how many songs can be played with just 3 simple chords.

If You want to learn everything there is to know about guitar chords check out this FREE mastering guitar chords course