Let's get started making a little bit of music with the guitar.
We're going to work on a C chord.
A chord is when we're going to play more than one note together.
You saw me fret single notes here a little bit ago and we talked about how to make a good sound out of those.
Now what we're going to do is put a couple of those together in a way that makes sense together.
This is a C note by itself. This is a C chord.
A chord is pretty much the foundation of building music around.
Usually you have music that has chords, a rhythm and a melody that goes with it.
A chord is the foundation for the whole thing so we need to get to a chord and we're going to do that right now.
This is the C chord and my first finger is playing the C note.
This open string remember is a B.
If you fretted up one into this first fret on the second string that's a C, that's a root note for this chord.
Alright let's try to get a few of these at a time.
Let's play the first, second and third string together with that finger right there.
This is a one finger C chord.
It should sound pretty good and chances are very likely on your first attempt it's going to sound like this.
There's a problem isn't there?
We need to learn how to fret in the middle here without hitting other strings.
I think you might remember from earlier that I said one of the problems can be when you're nervous, you know this is going to be hard
so you're going to try really hard.
You push hard and flatten out your finger especially big hands like mine
you can literally deaden strings on either side of what you are trying to fret.
So ease up just a little bit as much as possible, your finger needs to point straight into the fret board.
Not laying down lazy like it needs to go straight in.
This may feel uncomfortable for you at first and it will come in time but try to get that finger in there and touch the string and not have any buzz.
For you ladies one thing you're probably going to quickly realize is if you have excessively long nails on your left hand
it's going to cause you some problems.
You will have to experiment with your own hand and your guitar to figure out what you can get away with but a long nail will also cause you to push
into other strings they will scratch on the fret and generally just make it harder to do this
so keep your left hand nails down to a minimum and that will also help.
I know I said ladies but I actually do carry a lit bit of a nail on my left hand also you might notice that and that's for a very specific reason.
That's when I do pull pull-offs, I like having a little nail there to reinforce it
but I have to be careful if that nail gets too long it causes problems instead of helping.
Alright here we go we have three notes now on our C chord.
You should be able to do that with one finger.
Remember to stay up close to the wire.
Don't push too hard but hard enough to where that C note should ring clear without a buzz.
If you have that now look at your right hand.
How are you doing with striking only three strings?
That's all we want right now because that's all we're pushing down here.
These three make sense together.
This is a G note, our G string this the C note and that open E.
Those three do go together.
If you strum four and you grab that fourth string you should quickly realize that's not ok.
That D, that open D doesn't fit in our chord right now.
Don't play that with your right hand.
Let's do this.
Count with me a few beats and play those three strings with just the one finger C chord.
Is it ringing clear?
Are staying on rhythm and are you only hitting those three strings?
That's what we want. A little bit of accuracy and a little bit of rhythm.
Try it. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
Take a little time and do that and feel free to stop the video and go over that because what we're going to do now is we're going to make this chord
just a little bit harder and if you're already having trouble it might get worse from here rather than get better.
If you're good with this let's go farther and make a two fingered C chord.