Here is your second chord.
The second chord is going to be an A chord.
You are going to have A and E down hopefully by the time this lesson is done.
For this chord we are going to be taking our middle finger or our second finger placing it on the D string second fret.
Then you are going to take your ring finger or your third finger on the G string second fret.
Then you are going to take your pinky or your fourth finger and place it on your B string second fret.
They are all going to be on second fret and they are going to be lined up like this.
Just a quick note about these first two chords there are different fingerings you can use.
You could play your A like this or your E like this.
I am recommending you leave your first finger free when you are learning these chords first off
because when we start working on other chord positions there are other chords that are going to be based off these forms.
If you get in the habit of playing them with your first finger free it's going to be easier to learn those forms.
The other ways are not wrong.
It's just if you start off this way it may make things easier down the road.
Again let's review this A chord.
You've got your second finger second fret D string.
Third finger second fret G string.
Fourth finger second fret B string.
When we are strumming this chord we are not going to play the low E string.
We are only going to play from your fifth string or your A string down.
There is your A.
You will see in the supplemental content when you look at this diagram
that next to the low E string or the sixth string there is an X.
This is telling you whenever you see an X you are not going to play or you are either going to be muting
Or not playing that string. So here is A.
Apply that same chord pushup method that we worked on last time.
Get everything clean, strum and shake your hand out.
Do that a couple times until you consistently have a nice clean A chord.
The next thing you want to do when you are playing these chords is go back and forth between the two chords.
So you've got your E. Get that working.
Without pulling your hand completely off transition to the A.
Then transition back to the E.
A.
When you start transitioning like this you start to notice where each finger needs to transition
in order to make it smooth so that you are not stopping the sound all together.
If we look at the relationship between these two chords you can see that my fourth finger simply moves from my D string to my B string.
You can see that right there.
My third finger simply moves from my A string down to my G string and they are basically skipping a string and they are moving.
They are not changing frets.
The only one that actually changes frets is my second finger and that is going to move up to my D string.
In some of the other chords you will be learning and notice some relationships like that too where it is easier if you want to look at
changing chords and what each finger does to make those transitions.
Practicing them both ways is extremely key.
Practicing just coming right on and playing the chord.
Then practicing the transition.
Practicing the transition is easier once you've got a good clean sound.
What I am anticipating is that you will probably stop watching the lesson at this point for a little bit.
Practice getting a clean sound and cue up the rest of this lesson and work on strumming which is what we are going to do next.
Take a little bit of a break.
Focus on getting these chords clean.
Hopefully if you are on an electric guitar it's not going to hurt your hand too much to work on these for half an hour to an hour.
Then come back and we will work on strumming.