Open Chords on Guitar: The Complete Beginner's Guide

Almost every chord a beginner learns in the first few months is an open chord, and almost nobody explains what that actually means. The term describes a specific family of shapes that live in the first three frets and use unfretted strings as part of the chord. They are the foundation of guitar playing, and they stay useful no matter how advanced you become.

This guide explains what makes a chord open, which ones to learn and in what order, how to make them ring cleanly, and where they lead next.

What makes a chord open

An open string is one you play without pressing down anywhere. An open chord is any chord that includes at least one of them.

Play E minor: two fingers on the 2nd fret, and the other four strings ring without being touched. Four of the six notes come from open strings. That is why the chord sounds so full with so little effort.

Compare that with a barre chord, where your index finger presses across every string and nothing rings open. Barre chords are movable, which is their advantage, but they are harder and they lose the resonance that open strings provide.

Open chords have three properties worth understanding. They are easier, because fewer fingers are doing less work. They are louder and more resonant, because open strings vibrate along their whole length. And they are fixed in place, because an open string plays one note only, so an open chord shape cannot simply slide up the neck.

The open chords to learn, in order

There are more open chords than most beginners realise, but eight of them cover the overwhelming majority of songs. Learn them in roughly this order.

1. E minor

Middle and ring fingers on the 2nd fret of the A and D strings. Strum all six. Two fingers, nothing to avoid, every string rings. If you learn one chord today, learn this one.

2. A minor

Index on the 1st fret of the B string, middle on the 2nd fret of the D string, ring on the 2nd fret of the G string. Strum from the A string down. Your first three-finger shape, and a compact one.

3. E major

The A minor shape moved up one string. Index on the 1st fret of the G string, middle on the 2nd fret of the A string, ring on the 2nd fret of the D string. Strum all six. Learning Am and E together is a genuine shortcut.

4. D major

Index on the 2nd fret of the G string, ring on the 3rd fret of the B string, middle on the 2nd fret of the high E. Strum the top four strings. The shape is simple; the challenge is avoiding the two lowest strings.

5. A major

Three fingers crowded onto the 2nd fret of the D, G and B strings. Strum from the A string. If your fingers feel too big for the space, angle them slightly or try Asus2 instead while your hand adjusts.

6. C major

Ring finger on the 3rd fret of the A string, middle on the 2nd fret of the D string, index on the 1st fret of the B string. Strum from the A string. The first chord that asks for a real stretch across three frets.

7. G major

Middle finger on the 3rd fret of the low E, index on the 2nd fret of the A, ring finger on the 3rd fret of the high E. Strum all six. It spans the whole width of the neck, which is why it comes late despite being extremely common.

8. D minor

Middle on the 2nd fret of the G string, ring on the 3rd fret of the B, index on the 1st fret of the high E. Strum the top four. A tight, twisty shape that deserves a few extra days.

Our beginner chord guide goes into each shape in more depth, and the chord library has a diagram for every one of them that you can hear as well as see.

Making open chords ring cleanly

The whole point of an open chord is that every string sounds. A muted string is far more obvious here than in a barre chord, so cleanliness matters.

Press just behind the fret

Not on top of the metal, and not in the middle of the gap. Just behind the fret is where the string needs the least pressure to sound clean, and pressing harder in the wrong place will never fix a buzz.

Arch your fingers

Your fingers should come down almost vertically onto the string, touching with the tip. A finger lying flat will deaden the string next to it, which is the usual reason an open string goes silent.

Keep the fretting-hand nails short

Long nails make it physically impossible to use your fingertips, and no amount of practice will work around it.

Thumb behind the neck

Roughly behind your middle finger, not wrapped over the top. A wrapped thumb pulls your palm toward the strings and flattens every finger.

Do the ring test

Strum the chord, then pick each string one at a time and listen. Find the dead string, work out which finger is touching it, adjust, repeat. Thirty seconds of this per chord is worth more than an hour of hoping it improves. If buzzing persists, our guide to chord buzz covers the causes that are the guitar's fault rather than yours.

Open chords beyond the basic eight

Once the core shapes are comfortable, a few more open chords add a great deal of colour for very little effort.

Em7 is E minor with one finger lifted. One finger, six strings, and a modern, open sound.

Asus2 is A major with one finger removed, producing a bright, unresolved sound that works beautifully next to Em.

Cadd9 and Dsus4 both add tension without difficulty, and both sit close to shapes you already know.

Cmaj7 is C with the index finger lifted, which is both easier than C and softer in character.

A7, E7 and D7 are the open seventh chords, which pull strongly toward the next chord and are the backbone of blues. Our seventh chords guide covers them.

A useful habit: whenever a chord feels hard, check whether removing a finger produces a usable variation. Very often it does.

The limits of open chords

Open chords cannot be moved. Because they rely on specific open strings, sliding the shape up the neck produces something that is usually not a chord at all.

That is a genuine limitation. It means there are keys where the chords you need have no open version, which is why F, B and B minor cause so much trouble early on. There are two honest solutions.

The first is a capo, which effectively moves the open strings for you. Put a capo on the 3rd fret, play a G shape, and you get Bb without learning anything new. Our capo guide explains which fret gives which key.

The second is barre chords, which are movable precisely because they use no open strings. They are harder, and they are worth learning eventually, but not before your open chords ring cleanly. Our barre chord guide covers the transition, and easier versions of hard chords covers what to do in the meantime.

How to practise them

Practise changes, not shapes. A player who knows four chords and changes cleanly sounds better than one who knows twelve and stumbles.

• One-minute changes. Pick two chords, set a timer, switch back and forth strumming once per chord, and count the clean changes. Note the number and beat it tomorrow.
• Pairs that share fingers. Am to C keeps two fingers in place. Em to G moves two fingers as a unit. Finding the common ground between two shapes halves the work.
• Play real songs. Four open chords are enough for an enormous amount of music. Our song library has eighty-plus public-domain songs sorted by how many chords they need.

Why open chords still matter later

It would be easy to treat open chords as a stage to pass through. They are not. Experienced players use them constantly, for the same reason beginners do: they sound good.

The resonance of an open string is something a barre chord cannot produce. Open strings ringing against fretted notes create the shimmer heard across folk, country and acoustic rock. Alternate tunings exist largely to produce more open strings, not fewer.

So the goal is not to outgrow these shapes. It is to play them well, and then to add other tools alongside them.

Why this order and not another

Chord orders differ between teachers, and most of them work. The order above is built on two principles worth knowing, because they will help you judge any other list you come across.

The first principle is physical difficulty. Two-finger shapes come before three-finger shapes, compact shapes before stretched ones, and chords you strum fully before chords where you have to avoid strings. E minor is first because it fails none of those tests, and G is late because it fails two.

The second principle is usefulness in combination. Learning chords that belong to the same key means you can play songs almost immediately rather than waiting until the set is complete. Em, Am, C, D and G all sit in the key of G, so by the fifth chord you have more music available than you have time to learn.

Where the two principles conflict, usefulness usually wins. D major arrives before C and G despite the string-skipping problem, because D opens up so many songs that the inconvenience pays for itself.

What to do when progress stalls

Almost every beginner hits a point, usually in the second or third week, where the chords stop improving. This is normal and it is not a sign that you lack talent.

The usual cause is practising the same thing in the same way. If Am has been equally scruffy for ten days, playing it another hundred times will not help. Change one variable instead: play it much more slowly, or form it from scratch each time rather than sliding into it, or check each string individually rather than strumming.

The second common cause is sore fingertips. Calluses take two to four weeks to build, and until they do, your accuracy will drop as sessions go on. Shorter sessions more often beats pushing through pain, and our guide to calluses and sore fingers explains what is normal and what is not.

The third is tension. If your shoulder is raised or your grip is tight, your fingers lose their independence. Stop, shake out your hand, lower your shoulder and start again gently.

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