Author: Eyolf Østrem

So why is, then, that D is such a boring chord? To answer that, I’ll have to give you some theory. You probably don’t mind, since you’re going to rest your fingers a little while longer anyway.

“Grau ist alle Theorie”

If you think theory is boring, think again. Think of it, not as something you have to know in order to do something right (as most schools teach grammar, e.g.), but as a way of explaining what it is that you already know.

All chords belong together in families — the famous three chords, plus relatives and friends. Every song, at least in the popular music repertory, has a keynote (also called the ‘tonic’, hence abbreviated T), the main tone or chord around which the song revolves. This is almost always the tone/chord on which the song ends, and most frequently the tone/chord on which it begins, but that is not always the case. It is safest to go by the end.  A song in C major ends on a C major chord, etc. The keynote represents the stable level from which everything develops and to which it all returns.

In addition to the keynote, there are two different functions: that of extension, and that of tension. They are represented by the tones (and the chords built over these tones) a fifth and a fourth above the keynote, respectively. They are called the dominant and the subdominant.

The dominant (D) is the stable, loyal companion to the keynote, always there, not without its conflicts, but they are always resolved, and always in favour of the tonic – somewhat like a good old (or bad old, depending on the perspective) patriarchal marriage. In fact, one might consider all music within the western musical tradition (until the late nineteenth century in the art-music tradition, and until this day in the popular traditions) as nothing more than a play with the balance between these two scale steps. The dominant is there to generate tension, which is then resolved by the keynote.

The subdominant (S) usually stands a little behind the other two in the lineup – doesn’t have the self-conscious power of the tonic, nor the rebellious subservience of the dominant. It has a double role. Partly it is a chord closely related to the tonic, in many cases hardly more than a variant of it. In this capacity, it functions as a reenforcement of the tonic. But it also has a more expansive role, as the first step away from the tonic, especially in combination with the dominant, in some kind of cadential progression. The mother of all such cadences, at least in text books, is T–S–D–T (the beginning of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ is an example). The dominant creates a tension which demands a resolution, back to the tonic, and the subdominant is a helper on the way to get there, roughly speaking.

What does this mean in practice, then? A few examples are in place, before you can go on to play them yourself.

Tom Dooley has two chords: the keynote (tonic) and the dominant. In this case, the tonic is D, the dominant A7. The musical “story” of the song thus is a simple one: Establishing the key; deviation; return. This is the basic structure of every tune you are ever likely to play. (Avant garde genres in classical music do what they can to eschew this pattern; the question is if they can ever succeed).

The beauty of it is that almost no matter how long one holds the A7, it will retain the memory of the keynote, and the urge to get back there will be stronger the longer it is sustained.

The Talking Blues genre is a perfect illustration of this flexibility, this time with the Subdominant taking part in the play. See e.g. “Talkin’ World War III”, where the buildup to the climax in the verses is accompanied — literally — by a gradual escalation through the S and D steps, which can be stretched almost indefinitely, to accomodate verses of different length, until the final resolution to the keynote and the textual punchline, to great effect. This is most clearly seen in the last verse, where the “half the people … some of the time” lines are finally released by “‘I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.’ I said that” — the young Dylan’s greatest punchline.

The legendary three-chord chords

To summarize: all songs have a primary key, and two main secondary steps. Just about every chord in any song in the popular music repertory can be reduced to one of the three chord steps. Thus, in theory it would be possible to learn only three chords and play everything with those. In practice, it’s a little more complicated, but the fact remains that three chords is enough to play 90% of popular songs satisfactorily.

The three chords in the most common keys, are:

+------------------------------------+
| Keynote  | Dominant  | Subdominant |
|----------+-----------+-------------|
|  C       |    G      |     F       |
|  D       |    A      |     G       |
|  E       |    B      |     A       |
|  G       |    D      |     C       |
|  A       |    E      |     D       |
+------------------------------------+

The Third Chord: G

With the G major chord, we have the full trio of chords in the key of D. Its basic form is:

G major
  000
======
||||||
------
|1||||        320003
------
2||||3
------
||||||

Beginners will face two problems here: it’s a bit of a stretch since it covers everything from the first to the sixth string; and it doesn’t share any fingers or finger positions with D or A7.

For now, this can be remedied with some cheating: leave out the two bass strings and play only xx0003. Then G goes from being the beginner’s first hurdle, to being almost the easiest chord in the book. You should not get into the habit of playing it like that, of course (and eternal damnation on you if you do), but it will allow you to play more interesting songs with fairly more ease. Why not the campfire classic “Blowin’ in the Wind”?

Blowin’ in the Wind

D         G            A7       D
How many roads must a man walk down
D          G          D
Before you call him a man?
D        G            A7         D
How many seas  must a white dove sail
D          G             A7
Before she sleeps in the sand?
D        G               A7           D
How many times  must the cannon balls fly
D              G       D
Before they're forever banned?
    G          A7         D              G
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
    G         A7             D
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

G, it’s good to see ya!

You need not pay much attention to what I’m about to say here at this stage, but if you need a break from Blowin’:

If D is my hate chord, G is the chord I love the most. It is full-bodied and versatile where D is thin and limited. I will save the full explanation for later, but if you know how to master the G major chord, you are a huge step towards mastering the guitar itself.

There are many ways to finger G. The form I’ve given above, with the index, middle and ring fingers, is usually favoured by beginners, because the alternatives all involve the pinky, which may be a bit awkward to use at this point:

G major, variant fingerings
  000       000       00 
======    ======    ======
||||||    ||||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------
|1||||    |2||||    |1||||
------    ------    ------
2||||4    3||||4    2|||34
------    ------    ------
||||||    ||||||    |||||| 

It may come as a surprise if I say that the middle form is the preferred, the goal you should work towards. Why bother putting that huge span over all the strings between the ring finger and its little brother when there are so much easier ways to do it?

It has to do with sonority and versatility. The rightmost version above does not just use different fingers, but has different tones as well, and it gives a different sound (incidentally, this is the chord shape that is used in The Times They Are A-Changin’ and which gives the special sound of that song). It it good to be able to vary the sound, and being used to using the little finger makes it easier to play this variant chord.

The second reason is a little further ahead in time, but I’ll mention it already now, to give you an idea where you’re heading. If you use the fingering in the middle, you have a space defined by the outer strings, and between them there are four wonderful strings that you can play melodies and fills on while still playing the basic chord, and two wonderful fingers (index and middle) that are free to play them, in exactly the right area. This is what makes G such a unique chord, and it’s no coincidence that many of Dylan’s greatest acoustic songs are in the key of G (Times; Girl from the North Country/Boots of Spanish Leather; It ain’t me, Babe; Blowin’ in the Wind, which actually uses chords from the G major family, although it is sounding in D major; Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door; You ain’t going Nowhere; etc.), and Dylan uses the “awkward” fingering with long, ring and middle fingers — so why shouldn’t you?

Compare what I’ve said about G with the D chord: three fingers are in use, in a rather fixed position; besides, since you are avoiding two strings, there isn’t much of a space to move in.

Further songs

Here are two more songs to practice on. First the definition of “bittersweet”: “To Ramona” off Another Side of Bob Dylan.

D
Ramona, come closer
                        A7
Shut softly your watery eyes

The pangs of your sadness
                              D
Will pass as your senses will rise
    G
The flowers of the city
                                    A7
Though breathlike, get deathlike sometimes

And there's no use in tryin'

To deal with the dyin'
                                D
Though I cannot explain that in lines.

(For the rest of the verses, see dylanchords).

Then one of the gems from his lastest effort, Christmas in the Heart:

          D
Come they told me, pa rum pa pom pom

A new born King to see, pa rum pa pom pom
A7           
 Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pa pom pom
         D                 G                
To lay before the King, pa rum pa pom pom,
D              A7
rum pa pom pom, rum pa pom pom
D
  And so to honor Him, pa rum pa pom pom,
A7       D
When we come.

If this is not enough, you may take it as an exercise to find other songs and see how you can make them work with your three chords. Everything will not work, but most blues-based songs will.

Try to use the full version of G, but you are allowed to cheat. For now.

All the Lessons

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So you want to be a guitar hero? Here’s how:

Day 1

Go to your local instrument dealer and buy the following items:

• A tuner. It’s essential to have an instrument in tune, otherwise it will sound bad no matter how well you play it. You will think it’s your fault (and so will your girlfriend), and you will give up on the whole enterprise after day 5 or so. You play with your ears just as much as with your fingers, so you might as well get good habits from the start.
  You can get a good tuner for very little money. Make sure you get one where you can choose which tones to tune to, and not just to the standard tuning. You’re going to need that later on.
  You don’t have to buy a tuner, of course; there are excellent tuner programs around, which do the job just as good or better than a standalone tuner. I can’t give recommendations of tuner software for  Windows, but google “free guitar tuner windows” and you should find something that works.
• New strings. They produce the sounds, not your fingers or your ears. Bad strings — bad sound. Again: your girlfriend will think it’s your fault, and so will you.
• A new guitar. OK, this one is optional, at least until day 12, but even a great guitarist will only sound half great on a bad guitar. Besides, a good guitar will be easier to play on, hence easier to learn on.
  Nylon strings are easier on the fingers than steel strings. You will get sore fingers no matter what kind of guitar you have, so be warned.
• A capo. This is not essential at this stage, to be honest, but you will need one eventually, so you might as well buy one while you’re in the store. There are three main types: the cheapest ones fasten with a piece of elastic or nylon. The elastic models cost less than a beer, but are also the weakest, so they may not be able to press down all the strings with the necessary pressure and thus produce a buzzing sound. Besides, they will break, eventually. If you want to stay in the cheaper range, go with the nylon model to the left. The spring based model is more expensive. Many players love this kind. I don’t. Tastes differ. For what it’s worth, I use the lever-operated, no-frills capo to the right: it does what it’s supposed to do, and it will last forever.
  Make sure you get a capo that fits your guitar. Nylon string guitars have a flat fretboard and need a flat bar, whereas most steel string guitars have a curved fretboard and need a curved bar, as in the picture to the right.
• You may also want to buy some plectrums. They vary in thickness and elasticity. “Find the one that suits you best,” would be something to say to someone who has played for a while, so I won’t say that. I’ll say: get a Dunlop .71 mm. It’s glaringly pink, but other than that, it’s ideal: not too rigid (which will make it stick between the strings and you’ll loose it), nor too sloppy (which will produce more clicking than real guitar sound). Peter Stone Brown has told me that there is a brown Dunlop plectrum that is identical to the pink one. Ask your dealer.

You can now leave the shop and go home, change your strings (or ask the nice people in the shop to do it for you), tune your guitar (this you should do yourself — you will be doing it a lot, so you might as well get into the habit), and grab hold of your guitar.

Update: You may want to know a little more about tuning. If you’ve been a good student and done as the professor ordered, you can use your tuning device, and all should be fine. If you’re rebellious, obsessed about personal freedom, or for some other reason don’t have said device, here’s a quick run-through:

1. The standard tuning of a guitar is (from deepest to highest): E – A – d – g – b – e’
2. Tune the deepest string to an E. If you don’t have an instrument to tune to, find a CD, and go to dylanchords.info to find a song that ‘s in E. Most of Blood on the Tracks would do. Shooting Star is in E. Etc.
3. When that string is ok, press it down on the fifth fret. The fifth string should sound like the tone you get.
4. Repeat with the next two string pairs: the fifth string fingered at the fifth fret should sound like the open fourth string, same with fourth -> third.
5. Between the third and the second strings, the distance is smaller, so you will have to finger the third string on the fourth fret.
6. Between the two highest string, it’s again the fifth fret.
7. The sixth (deepest) and first (highest) strings should sound the same.

Now what?

Chord charts

Chances are, you are going to read a lot of tabs from the Net. I will get back to the topic of how to read tab later on, two words about it now, before we move on. A common way to write down chords, is as a string of numbers, from the deepest string (E) to the brightest (e’). It is common to number the strings in the other direction, so the “first string” is the brightest, and the “sixth string” the deepest.

“0” denotes an open string, a number indicates the fret to push down the string in, and “x” means that the string should not sound. Thus, 000000 means all strings open, and — slightly more exciting — 022000 means: place fingers on the second fret of the fifth and fourth strings.
This could also be written graphically, like this:

 o  ooo
 ======
 ||||||
 ------
 |23|||
 ------
 ||||||
 ------

This time, the numbers denote the left-hand fingers (1=index, 2=long, 3=ring, 4=pinky, and — when we get there: T=thumb from behind the neck).

Above the chart are signs that show what to do with the open strings. “x” means: “don’t play this string.” “0” means: this open string should sound.

There are other signs as well, but this will have to do for now.

The first chord: D

Learning to play the guitar is a drag. The main reason is that the first chord you’ll have to learn, is the most unwieldy chord in the book. I’ve secretly hated it since I first learned it, 35 years ago. It’s a D major chord, and it looks like this: xx0232, or:

xx0
======
||||||
------
|||1|2
------
||||3|

In other words: index finger on the third string, second fret, long finger on the first string, second fret, and ring finger on the second string, third fret.

The frets are the strips of metal that run across the neck. When I say “at the second fret”, it really means “in the space between the first and second metal bands” — “in the second box”.

Place your fingers as close to the middle of the “box” as possible. The whole point of putting a finger there is to “break” the string with an edge against the next fret band. If you press it down too close to the fret, you will have to press down harder to get that edge, and if you get too far back towards the first fret band, you may not get a sharp enough angle over the next fret to “break” the string. In both cases, you will either get a buzzing sound, or a very muffled sound (or no sound at all).

This is the first challenge with the D chord: to get the ring finger far enough up into the third fret and away from the two fingers at the second fret. I remember having struggled with that, and I’ve seen beginners sweating blood over it. If it’s any consolation, I can’t imagine now what the problem was; it does become second nature, and quicker than you might think while you’re cursing that little bugger of a ring finger. The same goes for all the chords, by the way.

Try also to place your fingers so that they are as perpendicular as possible to the fretboard. This should not be overdone, of course, but it is essential to good playing that you don’t accidentally stop one string with the finger of another string. This risk is minimized by the straighter attack from perpendicular fingers.

According to classical guitar technique, the thumb should be placed somewhere below the middle of the neck. If you’re just going to be playing chords, this is impractical, but the reason for it is well worth keeping in mind: the thumb is not there to hold the guitar, but to give support to the other fingers. Hence, it should be where it is most needed, which will be opposite where you finger the strings. So, don’t grab the neck like it was a stick. Instead, hold your arm out, let your hang hang down, naturally relaxed (like the zombie-posture, or something). Then, holding that position, twist your hand upwards, and you have your starting position.

Again: the goal is to be relaxed. Save as much as your energy as possible for when you really need it.

The D chord is a drag for two reasons. First, it’s boring. I’ll explain why tomorrow. Second, because it’s rigid: it fixes the hand in a certain position, and there isn’t much you can do with it. Both reasons have to do with the two “x”s in the chord chart: you should not play on the two deepest strings. That means that for your first chord, you will not be able to take advantage of the full sound potential of your instrument, which means that your girlfriend will only be slightly impressed — if at all.

But you’ll get there, don’t worry. For the time being, you have what’s needed to play — “Frere Jacques”. Finger your D chord and strike the strings with your thumb or — as I would prefer — the nail side of your index finger. Strike down in a steady rhythm where there is a dot. Try to avoid the two deepest strings:

.       .         .       .
Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping
.       .     .       .
Brother John, brother John?
.                 .        .                 .
Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!
.           .     .           .
Ding, ding, dong. Ding, ding, dong.

That may be thrilling, I don’t know. Perhaps not. One is almost nothing; two is almost many. Let’s add another chord.

The second chord: A7

The second chord is a close relative of D. It is called A7 and looks like this:

x02020

or

x0 0 0
======
||||||
------
||1|2|
------
||||||

Here, you are allowed — even encouraged — to strike the fifth string as well. That’s good news. Even better news is that it doesn’t really matter if you happen to hit the sixth string as well.

I’ll explain the relationship to D tomorrow. At the moment, you may notice that the two fingers that you use here are in the exact same position as they were in the chord of D, only moved one string up. That brings us to the first real exercise (after you have strummed to Frere Jacques for a while):

Changing between chords

The secret of guitar playing — one of them, at least — is to learn how to be lazy, how to economize with your energy. Since the fingers are already in position, don’t lift off the whole hand from D to regroup the fingers for the A7; rather move the two relevant fingers as a group. This may sound obvious, but it does take some time to get it into the fingers, especially since you will also have to lift off the ring finger completely.

The exercise is simple enough: practice changing between the two chord shapes in a regular fashion: two strokes D, two strokes A7, two D, two A7 …:

D  D  A7 A7 D  D  A7 A7 D  D  A7 A7 D  D  A7 A7 ...

Focus on the index and long fingers — if you wish, leave out the ring finger completely from the D chord. Continue until you can do it as one movement with two fingers, rather than moving two fingers separately. Try to avoid touching other strings than the ones you are fingering.
At last we can play a “real” song:

Tom Dooley

D              .         .      .
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
.              .        A7    .
Hang down your head and cry
A7             .         .      .
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
.                .        D    .
Poor boy, you're bound to die.

When you can play this without making an embarrassing pause before “cry”, you will probably have fingers that as so sore that you can relate to poor Tom. Time to take a rest and prepare for tomorrow’s lesson.

All the Lessons

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