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Three Chord Songs – C major, G major, and F major

April 21, 2017 By Klaus Crow 3 Comments

Three-Chord-Songs When you are at the beginning of your guitar learning journey, one of the best ways to practice is by learning songs you like and playing them until they sound perfect. This approach is fun and allows you to perform in front of your friends as soon as possible. You just need to know a bunch of chords and some simple strumming patterns.

In an another tutorial I listed 10 songs that you can play with just the C major and G major chords. The next chord to learn is F major. Why? Because F major is the fourth chord in the Key of C and one of the most common chord progressions is I-IV-V, or C-F-G. There are thousands of songs that use these simple three chords.

F major barred 133211 is not always easy for a beginner so we can always play F major like this XX3211 if necessary. The I-IV-V progression is known as the “Rock N Roll progression” so many of the examples below will fit into the rock and pop rock genre.

When dealing with two chord songs we are actually a little limited, especially when using only C and G, however by adding F major in a whole world of new music is opened up to us. One thing not mentioned in the last article was transposition. If we have a song in the Key of D using the chords D major and A major, it is easy to transpose that song to the Key of C were the chords will be C major and G major.

Since we are sticking to the Key of C some of the songs below may be slightly transposed, it all depends if it was possible. Sometimes a song just doesn’t sound right when transposed. So below are 10 songs that are perfect for knowing the chords C, F, and G.

KUMBAYA

Another simple traditional spiritual song, first recorded back in the 1920’s. This simple folk song is a perfect example of how these three chords work together. The fourth (F major) and fifth (G major) are used to create a musical tension and bridge before returning back to the root (C major). It is truly amazing how much western music is based off of how these three chords sound together!

TWIST AND SHOUT

This song was not written by the Beatles, but they are certainly the band who made it popular. This was the last song recorded on their album Please Please Me because their producer George Martin knew John Lennon’s voice would take a beating. He definitely gave it is all while singing this song!Continue Reading

How to Play and Apply Add9 Chords

September 18, 2015 By Klaus Crow 7 Comments

How to Play and Apply Add9 Chords To make chords, chord progressions and songs more colorful guitar players use chord embellishments.

Chords like sus2, sus4, maj6, maj7 and add9 can all be used to spice up your playing and create more interesting sounds.

The add9 chord is a big favorite in pop and acoustic rock music.

Analysis
The add9 chord is simply a major triad with an added ninth (9).
The major triad consists of the root (1), the major third (3) and the perfect fifth (5).
So the add9 chord formula = 1 3 5 9

Let’s take Cadd9 chord as an example.
We look at the C major scale: C D E F G A B C and we take the root (1st), 3rd, 5th and 9th note of that scale and you get the notes: C-E-G-D. So Cadd9 = C E G DContinue Reading

The 8 Most Important Open Guitar Chords For Beginners

May 16, 2014 By Klaus Crow 54 Comments

The Most Important Chords for Beginners

Where do you start when you want to learn to play guitar? Well learning chords and strumming songs is the first thing you want to work on.

The chords are the building blocks for your songs, they give you the harmony. The strumming delivers the rhythm and together they are the accompaniment for your or someone else’s singing voice which in turn provides the melody.

The 8 chords every beginner guitar player should learn first are: C – A – G – E – D – Am – Em – Dm. (you can memorize the first 5 open major chords by the word CAGED)

Songs with Beginner Chords

With these simple chords alone you can play an endless amount of easy songs. For example there are about a million songs that use this chord progression: G – D – Em – C (also called the I – V – vi – IV progression).

Songs like “I’m yours” by Jason Mraz, “With or without you” by U2 and “She will be loved” by Maroon 5 can all be played with just these 4 chords. Not all of these songs are originally in the key of G but you could easily fix that with the help of a capo and play it in the appropriate key.

The open chords are also the starting point and components for the more advanced chords that follow like barre chords. All barre chords are derived from open chords. If you’re interested check out The Four Most Essentiall Barre Chords.

How to Play The Beginner Guitar Chords

We’re going to show you each chord one at a time. How and where to put your fingers on the strings. Check out the 8 chord diagrams below. Learn the chords thoroughly and memorise them to build your most important chord vocabulary: