by Brian Autumn

Who this is for: Guitar players looking to understand chords.

Prerequisite: Know how to play a G Major open chord. Have basic knowledge of intervals.

The problem with a lot of beginner guitar books and lessons is that they do not show the underlying mechanics of how chords work, or what they even are. In this tutorial, we’ll take a chord, and by analyzing its contents, we can easily manipulate it to create more exciting sounding chords. Any musician should have working knowledge of how chords work so this short lesson will help you experiment with a chord you already know!

Guitarists need to know what every note in their chord voicing is functioning as. For this tutorial, we will simply use a G major open chord as a reference, because most guitar players seem to know this chord from early on. In this first illustration a G major triad is shown, usually as it would be in most chord books.



The problem with this however, is that we do not really know what is going on here. A triad in western harmony contains three parts, A root, a third, and a fifth. The root of this basic chord, is lowest note. Red will label the root. Notice that there are various instances of the root in this chord. All of them are essentially doing the same thing.



To build a G major triad, only one root is needed, but in this case the extra root notes will just give it a more pronounced G sound (G is the root). The next illustration will show where the third and the fifth are.

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by Kurt Prange

Passive (i.e. battery-free) electric guitar circuits are relatively simple and the possibilities for customization are endless. A basic understanding of pickups, potentiometers, capacitors and switches is all you need to get creative and take more control of your instrument’s voice on an electronic level.

Where does the electric guitar signal come from?

Pickups are transducers that convert the mechanical energy of a vibrating guitar string into electrical energy by way of electromagnetic induction. It is a fundamental concept studied in physics and electronics that a changing magnetic field will generate a current through a coil of wire. The electric guitar pickup uses permanent magnets and pole pieces to form a steady magnetic field in the vicinity of each individual guitar string.

An opposite magnetic polarity is induced in the metallic (steel core) guitar string when mounted above its respective pole piece and when the string moves, the otherwise steady magnetic field changes accordingly. Wire is wrapped around the poles thousands of times to form a coil within the magnetic field to pick up an induced current and voltage.

click on image to enlarge)



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In every key there are seven chords than can be numbered from 1 to 7 using Roman Numerals. In this example we’ll take the key of G. So here are the chords(the chord fingerings are pictured above):

I …… II …… III …… IV …… V …… VI ……VII
G … Am …. Bm ….. C …… D …… Em …. F#dim



The I, IV, V chords are always major chords. The II, III, IV are always minor chords. The VI chord is not used that often in popular music, so I’ll leave it alone for now.

What can you do with this knowledge?

Create songs, baby! When you play a I – VI – IV – V progression in the key of G, you know that you’re playing G – Em – C – D. If you play around with different combinations of chord progressions, you’ll start to notice the familiar sounds associated with song structure.

Here are some other popular progression to try:

So go through each key and figure out the chord progressions, learn the chords and start working out combinations to work on your own song. Don’t over complicate it, just do it an listen as you play. If you need help with your chord fingerings, use the widget in the right hand column.