I spent the vast majority of my guitar playing years focusing on lead technique. It wasn't until fairly recently that I started paying great attention to chords, rhythm and music theory in general. I certainly wish I had taken up an interest in these crucial musical concepts years ago because they are clearly a foundation needed for any guitar player to reach excellence in their playing. In this article I will focus on chords. I won't go into chord theory (there are tons of sites online that cover the topic ). Instead, I will show you what I have discovered to be the most useful chord voicings for a guitarist to learn.

There are several schools of thought on chord knowledge. On one extreme, there is the approach of learning hundreds or perhaps even thousands of chords. I do not subscribe to the extreme approach. Instead, I believe that a guitarist should build a chord vocabulary of the most useful chord voicings across a variety of chord types.

Through the course of this article, I will provide useful chord diagrams that depict the most useful chord fingerings. The diagrams show the root note in red and the notes and intervals are shown at the botom of the diagram. In some cases I left out the fifth interval since it often does not contribute to the quality of the chord (especially true with Jazz chords). There are also cases where I am leaving out the root note since the root also does not contribute to the essence of certain chords. When unneeded intervals are left out of a chord, the resulting chord is often referred to as a Shell Chord.

It is also important to note that all these chords are moveable chords. That means that all you need to do is slide the root note up or down the fretboard and you will have the same chord type but with a different root (i.e. C Major 7 vs D Major 7).

Learning these chord voicings will give you a strong foundation from which you can take your further chord studies to whatever extreme you desire!