One-Finger Guitar Chord Primer, Lesson 1

The idea here is to give guitar beginners the absolute easiest shapes to begin making music with, as opposed to the standard open C, open G, and other open position chords that can be tough to finger, remember, understand and see.

I invite your comments and suggestions on this approach. You can send them here: dk_NO_SPAM_@MaximumMusician.com. Remove the _NO_SPAM when you type out the email address. Okay, first thing is tuning.

-- Tuning down: optional step --

You don't have to do this step, but I highly recommend it: Tuning your guitar DOWN. One of the biggest problems beginners face is lack of finger strength. We're going to minimize that problem by making the strings as easy to press down as possible -- while still enabling us to produce sounds, obviously.

A caution in doing this: *Keeping your guitar tuned like this may not be very good for your guitar over a long period of time.* So, you may want to tune down per the following instructions, practice the lesson, and then tune back to regular tuning.

We're just going to tune three strings here: 2, 3 and 4. String 2 is the second skinniest string, string 3 the third skinniest, and string 4 the fourth skinniest. In other words, string 4 is the thickest or fattest string among these three strings. We are ignoring strings 1, 5 and 6 for now.

Now, tune the guitar to these sound files:

CAUTIION: *Tuning down your guitar like this may not be good for it over a long period of time.* Tune back to regular tuning after you finish practicing the One Finger exercises.

String 2.
String 3.
String 4.

And that's all for this lesson. Remember to send any questions and comments to dk_NO_SPAM_@MaximumMusician.com without the no-spam piece.

Next time out: the One Finger shape. Thanks for reading.

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