Playing left hand chord shapes is a large part of guitar playing and a player can stamp his own style on a piece of music by the shapes he chooses to use. I’ve given you charts here for the standard chord shapes that I use in a lot of my arrangements. I’ve left some spaces so that you can fill in more shapes that you like as you come across them. You should try and build up your own family of chords that will help define your own unique style. If you’re a beginner guitarist then you should start with the shapes that I’ve highlighted in grey. These are the most common shapes.
The best way to learn chord shapes is to play songs so I would advice you to go to the chord arrangement lessons for the songs such as Over The Rainbow, Moon River and Cry me A River where I talk you through some of these left hand chord shapes. Also try using the shapes when you are practising your right hand picking technique. A good exercise to try is to pick a right hand picking pattern and then apply to all the shapes for one chord name. So for instance, taking the chord name of E, play E major, E7, Em, E9 etc. Listen to the different textures of the chords as your playing them.
Click here to download my chord charts.
Click here to download my chord charts.