For today’s free guitar lesson, we’re going to use just one chord shape — E major — and create the four most common chords in Western music with it. In a couple of minutes we’ll be able to play literally thousands of songs from the past hundred years.
At the end I’ll show you how to play Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” using this one chord. Feel free to go straight to the videos, or check out the explanations for detailed instructions.
Perhaps you’re a bit skeptical that you can play so many songs with only four chords. If so, check out this video, which only show cases a sampling of songs that can be done with these four chords — and in only one specific order.
Let’s Get Started
We’re going to make our own four chords right now. To start off, we’re going to make a run-of-the-mill E major open chord, as in the following picture and video. We’re going to use a special fingering for it, though.
The 6th string (the fattest string) will be open, then we’ll use our ring finger on the 5th string, 2nd fret. Next, our pinky will get the 4th string, 2nd fret. Then our middle finger will get the 3rd string, 1st fret. Finally, strings 2 and 1 will be left open. Our index finger will take a break for the moment (we’ll be using it later on). The shorthand for this chord would be: 022100.
Check out the video below to hear what the chord should sound like.
Moving the E Major Chord Up to Get More Chords
Because of the way the guitar happens to be tuned, we can take this E major chord we’ve made, and move it up the neck of the guitar to make new chords.
I do this by paying attention to where my ring and pinky finger are. When we start out, they’re both on the 2nd fret. To get my next chord, I’m going to keep my fretting fingers in the same shape they’re in, and move them up the neck until my ring and pinky finger are both on the 7th fret (so my middle finger will be in the 6th fret). This is a slight variation of an A major chord.
If I move this chord shape up two more frets, so my ring and pinky finger are both on the 9th fret (middle finger on the 8th), I’ll have a slight variation of a B major chord.
Finally, if I keep moving this chord shape up until my ring and pinky fingers are on the 14th fret (middle finger on the 13th), I’ll be playing another E major chord.
Check out the video below to see me run through the chords I’ve just mentioned:
Adding Some Oomph: Getting the Root in the Bass
Now we’re going to start using that lazy index finger. When I’m playing the original E major chord, I’ll leave it off. But when I move up to the next chord (the A major, with my ring and pinky on the 7th fret, middle finger on the 6th), I’m going to put my index finger down on the 6th string on the 5th fret. It might be easier to think of using your index finger on the 6th string, always two frets lower than your ring and pinky.
I’ll keep doing this when I move up two frets to make my B chord, and all the way up to form my higher E major chord.
The Missing Link: Adding a Minor Chord
We’re missing one really powerful chord: a minor chord. In the key we’re in, E, the minor chord we want is C# minor. We’re going to keep the same chord shape to get it, but with a slight variation. We’re actually going to cheat a bit and not play a normal minor chord. The upside is that it’ll still sound great, and we don’t have to change chord shapes. I say, well worth it.
For this one, we’ll take the shape we’ve been working with so far, and move it up so that our index finger is on the 6th string, 9th fret, ring finger is on the 5th string, 11th fret, pinky is on the 4th string, 11th fret, and middle finger is on the 3rd string, 10th fret. As always, strings 2 and 1 are open. Another way of notating that chord is: 9-11-11-10-0-0.
Try playing this chord as is. Yikes! Where did that come from? It’s not your fault, this chord just doesn’t fit into what we’ve been doing. If you play each note of that chord individually, you’ll find the culprit: string 3. We can fix this by changing where we fret that string, but we took an oath at the beginning of this lesson not to change shapes. So what can we do? We’re going to mute a string.
Muting is when you touch a string to keep it from sounding. Keep the same chord shape. We’re going to mute that wonky 3rd string with the finger that’s currently fretting the 10th fret of it: our middle finger. To mute, we want to release pressure on the string so that we’re not actually fretting it. At the same time, we want to keep touching it with our fingertip so that when the pick hits that string, our finger absorbs the vibration, and it doesn’t sound.
To get a better idea of what this looks and sounds like, check out the video below.
“Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar
Now that we’ve got our four chords, we’re going to play an actual song. Below is a video of me using these chords to play the intro/chorus from “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”.
The shorthand notation for the chords we’ll be played (all mentioned above) are:
High E: 12-14-14-13-0-0 (you can also play the “low E” instead, that’s fine: 0-2-2-1-0-0)
A: 5-7-7-6-0-0
B: 7-9-9-8-0-0
C#m: 9-11-11-x-0-0 (the “x” means we’ll be muting that string)
The chord progression for the intro/chorus will go:
High E — A A — C#m C#m — B B —
High E — A A — C#m C#m B B A A B B —
And the chord progression for the verse will go:
High E — B C#m — A B — B —
High E — B C#m — A B — B —
Stay tuned next week for…
- Another even easier movable chord shape
- How to play every doo-wop song you’ve ever heard
- How to play all those songs from “The Four-Chord Song” and more
- More examples of songs you can learn and play in less than 5 minutes
See you next time!