Open Chords

While the main reason that most guitarists end up starting off with open chords is because they can be played before a beginner has spent enough time to build much hand strength, there are some other advantages to these types of chords over bar chords. While open chords require a different shape for every chord and are limited as to which chords can actually be played, they do allow a guitarist to play with them in ways that quite difficult and impractical using bar chords. Not all of them are easily manipulated, and guitarists do often write songs in particular keys for no other reason than to play with certain open chords. “Laser Love” by T. Rex would not have worked in any other key, at least not easily for a guitar player. While open chords do tend to limit a guitarist to certain keys and chord progressions, sometimes it is worth it to use certain chords.

Open A

The open A chord allows not only the major and minor version of the chord, but easy access to both the Asus2 and Asus4 chord. The A major chord can be more difficult to hold, so many guitarists will simply bar the second fret and omit picking the 1st string. For faster parts, this is basically a necessity. A minor is a very common key for guitar parts and just in general for music (A minor contains all the natural notes), so this is quite a handy open chord to be familiar with.

Open C

The open C major is a pretty common chord, though guitar based music doesn’t really use the C major as commonly as some other instruments. The Cadd9 is frequently used in many guitar parts. Sometimes this is just for ease of playing, since the second version shown above requires only a very small shift from the guitarist in order to switch between it and the open G chord.

Open D

The open D chords are probably the easiest to use to swap to and from the sustained chords. It doesn’t matter if you are hold a D major or D minor chord, the exact same motions will allow you to play Dsus2 and Dsus4 with ease. These shifts are quite a bit easier to make the open A versions, so they tend to be more common when an open D is used than for an open A.

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Open E

Most guitarists will only ever use the E major or E minor open chords. The sustained chords are not very practical, and would require a very dramatic shift in the way they are held to be possible. Occasionally, someone may add a note to make these chords sound a bit different, but expect just the plain chords most of the time an open E is called for.

Open G

There are basically two different versions of the open G major chord. The first one tends to be more popular with beginner guitarists, but the second one tends to be more popular with rock and metal guitarists because it is similar to the open G power chord. The second version also transitions very easily into the Cadd9 open chord, and there are parts that are centered heavily around that chord change. “Every Rose Has Its Thorns” by Poison is almost completely centered around that chord change.

B and F chords

There really isn’t a B or F open chord that is commonly used, so instead the bar chord versions are learned to allow a guitarist to play progressions with B or F chords in them. It isn’t too unusual to see a beginner guitarist that has never heard of bar chords that knows both of these. What is a little strange about these two particular bar chords is that they are two of the most difficult ones to hold, but are the most frequently ones taught to beginners. Don’t be surprised if you can hold all of the other chords, but not these two, it does take some time to develop the hand muscles to a point where it is possible to hold these chords