GUITARHABITS

Free Quality Guitar Lessons

  • Home
  • Best Posts
  • Categories
  • All Lessons
  • Donate♥
  • About
  • YT
  • IG
  • FB

Bar Chord Songs for Beginners and Intermediate

By Klaus Crow 8 Comments

Today I have a great list of songs for learning and improving your bar chords. I’ll also show you how to apply bar chords to a song.

Once you have practiced open chords and spent some fair amount of time learning beginner songs you are ready to learn bar chords. While you can apply bar chords to any song you like, there are typical bar chord songs that are a perfectly suited for the bar chord practitioner.

For your first bar chord song it’s a good idea to use a combination of open chords and bar chords. Bar chords are a bit tricky in the beginning so start with a song and implement bar chords as well as the easier open chords. You can turn any chord into a bar chord, so pick one or two to start with. With practice you can gradually build up the amount of bar chords you put in a song. When you feel comfortable enough you can play your songs using solely bar chords.

There are four main bar chord shapes you can use in your songs: E-shape, A-shape, Em-shape and Am shape (see diagrams below).

The A-shape bar chord can be played in two ways: The A-shape (second diagram on the left) that uses the standard fingering and the A-shape (first diagram on the right) with the alternative fingering which is also a very popular one. Eventually you want to learn both of them.

You can move each bar chord shape up and down the neck which changes the name of the chord. This way you can play the bar chord shape in every key. A full explanation of this can be found in How to Play, Locate, Memorize and Practice Bar Chords

SETTING UP BAR CHORD PROGRESSIONS

By using the E-shape and A-shape you can play each bar chord in two ways. For example: The “C” chord can be played as an E-shape bar chord on the 8th fret or as an A-shape chord on the 3rd fret. They are both C chords only on a different position on the neck. (See Major and Minor Bar Chord Shapes lists below).

Continue Reading

Top 20 Easy Popular Jazz Guitar Chord Songs

By Klaus Crow 2 Comments

Top-20-Easy-Popular-Jazz-Guitar-Chord-SongsFor most guitar players jazz guitar comes on their path through progress somewhere between intermediate and advanced level. Of course there are also guitar players who start out with jazz. It all depends on who your influences are, how badly you want to learn something, your skill level and determination.

Usually you start out learning easy guitar songs, and then you move onto blues, rock or country and when you’re ready to be challenged and expand your horizon even more you might want to consider to focus on jazz.

Learning jazz really opens up a whole new world of possibilities and makes guitar playing even more interesting and exciting. Even if you’re not into jazz and it’s not really your style, learning from jazz will benefit any style of playing.

To begin with jazz it’s nice to learn playing some jazz chord songs. Jazz progressions are really fun to play and will broaden your chord vocabulary and musical knowledge.

You can get your hands dirty with this list of popular jazz songs performed by many great jazz players and artists. You can click the song title and start listening to the song. The “Chords” link will give you the basic jazz chords to the song.

Next to the song title I mentioned the artist who performed the song, and not the songwriter. If you’re interested in who composed the music you can google “song title” + wiki.

Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Pick one song to begin with, listen to the song a couple of times, learn the chords, the progressions, listen to it again, take it easy one step at a time, have patience and practice it daily. Keep it at and you will get it under your belt. You’ll be rewarded.

Enjoy!

1 – Autumn leaves – Nat King Cole – Chords – More Chords

2 – All of me – Frank Sinatra – Chords – More Chords

3 – The girl from Ipanema – Sinatra & Antônio Carlos Jobim – Chords – More Chords

4 – Summertime – Billy Holiday – Chords – More Chords

5 – Take the A train – Duke Ellington – Chords
Continue Reading

How to Quickly Transpose A Song Without Capo

By Klaus Crow 9 Comments

How-to-Quickly-Transpose-A-Song-Without-CapoThere are many ways to transpose a song in different keys. You can use a capo, play a song in bar chords and then move all the chords up or down, or write down all the chords of the song in the appropriate key.

Those are good solid ways, but sometimes it’s just nice to transpose without capo, bar chords or too much hassle of writing things down.

You want to switch between keys instantly using mainly open chords, because they sound nice and are easy to play. We’re not going for any sharp or flat keys in this post. We keep things simple.

So how do you go about that?

First, you want to know how to build chords of the major scale. If you don’t know how to do that, you can check out this post. If you don’t want to get into the theory behind it, no worries, you can also read on and just memorize the chord sequences that follow. You can always read more about it after this post.

Now we start with deriving the 7 chords from the C Major scale:
C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am – Bdim
Continue Reading

Top 30 Best Acoustic Guitar Songs of the 70’s

By Klaus Crow 4 Comments

Top-30-Best-Acoustic-Guitar-Songs-of-the-70’s The seventies was a time when the acoustic guitar was really shining in popular music. Although electric guitar music really made its way into the charts, there was still more than enough room for acoustic songs by great artists.

Today we’ve got a list of 30 great acoustic 70s songs. Always note that these lists are in no particular order and they’re obviously incomplete. I create these lists to inspire, explore and motivate.

My personal favorites from this list are “Working class hero” by John Lennon, “Fire and rain” by James Taylor and “Needle and the damage done” by Neil Young. I’d love to know your personal favorite and if you have a suggestion for a great 70’s acoustic guitar song that is not on this list please share it in the comments.

All the guitar music of the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and later have their own specialty and magic to it, but the 70’s was era on it’s own with so much beautiful music and new styles being born and flourishing it deserves a list you can indulge in as a guitar music lover.

Each song title contains a YouTube link to the original song. The “Chords” link will take you to the chords and the “Official Chords/TAB” link will show the official transcriptions.

Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Listen, Play and Enjoy!

1 Knockin’ on heavens door – Bob Dylan (1973) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB

2 Heart of gold – Neil Young (1972) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB

3 The Boxer – Simon and Garfunkel (1970) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB

4 Working Class Hero – John Lennon (1970) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB

5 Hotel California – The Eagles (1977) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB

6 My sweet lord – George Harrison (1970) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB

7 Father and son – Cat Stevens (1970) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB

8 American Pie – DonMcclean (1971) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB

9 Landslide – Fleetwoodmac (1975) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB

10 Wild horses – The Rolling Stones (1971) – Chords – Official Chords/TAB
Continue Reading

Next Page »

Most Popular Posts

Easy Guitars Songs For Beginners

Best Acoustic Guitars under 450 Dollars

8 Most Important Chords for Beginners

Learn The Guitar Fingerboard in 16 Days

Easy Guitar Riffs & Intros for Beginners

16 Legendary Fingerpicking Patterns

The 5 Pentatonic Scale Shapes

How to Play Beautiful Open Chord Shapes

Best Guitar Amps for Practice and Small Gigs

Categories

  • Chord Melody
  • Chords
  • Chord progression
  • Strumming | Rhythm
  • Fingerpicking
  • Scales
  • Soloing | Improv
  • Licks
  • Riffs
  • Excercise
  • Motivation
  • Rock
  • Blues
  • Gear
  • Songs
  • Solos
  • Music theory
  • Practice
  • Intervals
  • Arpeggios
  • Vocals | Singing
  • Ear training
  • Songwriting
  • Recording
  • Performing
  • Online guitar tools
  • Country
  • Metal
  • Jazz
  • Pop of all times
  • Best buy
  • Christmas
  • Ear practice
  • Lifestyle Design
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Uncategorized

Copyright © 2025 · Guitarhabits - About - Privacy Policy - Change Consent - Do Not Sell My Personal Information - Cookie Policy

Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Scroll Up