How to Play Open Chords on Classical Guitar Strings

Views：1249 Time：2022-04-29Writer：Alice

Most guitarists can remember their first guitar lesson. Many learned their first song on day one –Maybe it was Green Days’ Time of Your Life or Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water. And for others, they learned their first open chord on their classical guitar strings: the G chord.

 

What is an Open Chord?

Basically, an open chord is a chord where at least one classical guitar string is not fingered and the open classical guitar string vibrates freely. Open chords tend to put less stress on the player’s hands and fingers because there are fewer notes to fret. That is good news for starters who have been suffering from the painful fingers hurt by classical guitar strings.

 

Reasons Why Starters Should Learn Open Chords First

1.     Beginner-Friendly

If you are a fresh guitar player, your guitar teacher may have shown you an open chord or two on your first lesson (probably a G chord) and a song comprised solely of open chords. This is why open chords are notorious for being beginner-friendly.

2.     Prepare for Learning Barre Chord

While an open chord requires you to play a classical guitar string or more, the barre chord requires a player to use more fingers to press down on a single fret across multiple strings. Typically, a barre chord requires more strength to accomplish. For this reason, learning an open chord paves the road to a more complex chord, including the barre chord.

3.     Have a Better Understanding of Classical Guitar

After learning the open chord, you can really step into the sea of classical guitar playing techniques. Since you have to learn how to pluck and strum the classical guitar strings before learning the open chord and get the idea of what the chord chart means in the lesson, you may make progress after the class and gain your own understanding of how to play classical guitars strings. The next move for you is to keep absorbing the knowledge about classical guitars and level up.

 

How to Read a Chord Chart

If you are a new guitar player, you might have met a chord chart but really have no idea how to read it. There are a few tips for you to read a chord chart:

• When you are looking at a chord chart, you should pretend like you are looking at your guitar’s fretboard as if your guitar was standing up directly in front of you. Then, read the charts from your left to right.
• The chord chart will show a thicker black line at the top to represent the nut of your guitar, and below are the first 4 frets. It is usually known that the represented chords that are played closer to the nut are open chords unless you see a number in front of the chord chart representing a different fret further down the neck of the guitar.
• On a chord chart, the right vertical line represents the 1st string (or the Hight E string), and the left vertical line represents the 6th string. The horizontal lines represent the fret bars and the space between the horizontal lines represents the frets.
• Lastly, the dots tell you where to put your fingers – just follow it, and then you will know how to play a chord.

 

How to Combine Open Chords?

When it comes to combining guitar chords and understanding which chords might sound pleasant to the ear when played in succession, a guitarist might be better off by studying a bit of music theory and understanding the relationship between all the notes. But if you might not be interested in learning the music theory first, here is a chord progression that might be good for a guitar player just starting: G, C, D, and Em in the Key of G Major (all open chords of course). Another thing that might help a beginner guitarist is to learn to play some songs by their favorite artist. After some practice on classical guitar strings, you might begin to develop an ear for what chords sound good together.

 

Why Play Alice?

As a starter who needs to practice a lot, you are in need of durable classical guitar strings that save your money. What’s more, the classical guitar strings set should be bright and clear for you to identify if you are playing a harmonious chord. That is why you should choose Alice AC139 classical guitar string set: these titanium-nylon-plain strings have a transparent purple appearance and anti-rust coating that supports long-time playing. The wound material is silver plated 85/15 bronze, performing warm sound.

Conclusion

We hope that this article is valuable to you in your new journey as a guitarist. We at Alice aim to improve our customer’s guitar-playing experience by providing high-quality strings. This is why we have dedicated ourselves to producing some of the best guitar strings in the market today. Our multiple lines of classical guitar strings have superb quality, so feel free to contact us if you would like to enjoy them!