Beginner Guitar Lessons

Almost every home has one sitting in the corner, hanging on the wall, or hidden in a closet or under a bed: a guitar. Perhaps it was gift or maybe it was a well-intentioned purchase....you've always wanted to learn how to play guitar chords, but something prevented you from seeing it all the way through.

Perhaps, you were frustrated with the trial and error of finding a guitar teacher that would give you the guitar lessons that reflect what you wanted to learn, or maybe you were embarrassed about your rate of progress when showing up to next inconveniently scheduled guitar lesson.

Now you can learn how to play guitar chords at your own pace with 15-year veteran guitar teacher Al Bermudez.

Our Master Chord Studies guitar lessons start with the basics for the beginner, then comprehensively walks you through the steps to become an accomplished musician. Completing our guitar lessons will have you playing complex guitar chords used by the top studio musicians just as instinctively as the "beginner chords" you learned in the beginning.

Al will explain and show you how to play chords on a guitar and the fingering for each of the chords along with crystal clear diagrams and guitar chord charts. No music reading is required!

Even more advanced guitarist and songwriters find these chord-based guitar lessons a valuable asset helping to open up exciting new harmonic possibilities when composing or performing on stage.

Whether you desire to play Rock, Jazz, Country, Funk, or Blues - electric or acoustic - you'll learn how to play guitar chords, and a few tricks, that are the foundation of all these and many other music styles.

Structured to naturally flow from one guitar lesson to the next, our chord series is designed to help you retain what you have learned so you won't suffer the frustration that you may have had with many of the free online guitar lessons. Our goal is to make you the guitarist you always wanted to be, and we help you do it for a fraction of the cost of a single traditional private guitar lesson.

Dust off that guitar. With our instantly accessible guitar lessons (also available on DVD) you can learn how to play chords on a guitar today.

Basic Guitar Chords - Level 1

This is where it all starts for the beginning guitarist. These chord-based guitar lessons are not only the foundation on how to play chords on a guitar, but also the building blocks for your successful guitar experience.

These comprehensive guitar lessons apply to both the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar, and cover the basics for all styles of music.

We start our guitar lessons with proper left hand positioning, so the chords you finger will sound properly and ring true. This also allows you to play them with ease, using less finger pressure, reducing fatigue and the resulting frustration that prevents many beginners from continuing on.

You be shown the fun and easy "spider" finger exercise. The spider and other exercises in Total Guitar Chords Level 1 will help you learn how to play guitar chords and how to operate each finger independently, instead of the pre-conditioned response of using your fingers in chronological order, allowing you to position your fingers simultaneously and make smooth transitions between chords.

There will be a brief synopsis of proper right hand (your picking or strumming hand) positioning and techniques to get you started, with more detailed explanation on strumming, picking, and fingerstyle techniques introduced later in the video guitar lessons as your playing advances.

With these fundamentals in place, the following guitar lessons will show you (in detail) how to play chords on a guitar, the first position guitar chords in major, minor, seventh forms, and just for fun, the suspended (sus) chords. These guitar chords use open (non-fingered) strings ringing along with your fingering to provide a full-rich sound which will encourage you to play.

And for those that about to rock, we salute you! In our guitar lessons, we'll show you how to play those "power chords" and common rock chord progressions just as they are played by your favorite rock bands.

In addition, in our chord guitar lessons we'll show you how to play chords on a guitar that are known as "movable form chords" and how to use them. These barre chords (simply pronounced "bar") use the exact same fingering, changing pitch depending on where they are played on the neck of the guitar. While being practical, it also looks impressive.

We'll bring your right and left hands together operating in concert. With that capability, along with your newly acquired knowledge of how to play guitar chords, you will not only have the ability to play many songs, but will be placed on the springboard to take your playing to the next level!

Learn Guitar Chords - Level 2

Whether you're continuing from Total Guitar Chords Level 1, or received your basic study from traditional guitar lessons on how to play guitar chords, Total Guitar Chords Level 2 is design to add depth and dimension to your playing. 

Most standard beginning guitar chords consist of three notes. Many times those same three notes (referred to as a triad) are found repeated twice or three times in a chord an octave or two apart, explaining how you can strum all six strings but only be playing three notes.

But, this is just the tip of the tonal iceberg that the guitar has to offer. Obviously, the guitar is capable of playing as many as six different notes at a time. These are known as extended chords.

Our advanced chord-based guitar lessons, studies the more complex extended chords and shows you how to apply them, building off the knowledge you previously obtained.

As with all of our guitar lessons, each lesson leads directly into another. This re-enforces what you have already learned, and shows you the foundation and reasoning for the current guitar lesson you are working on. This is even more important in the study of how to play guitar chords and these extended guitar chords, where their application is of paramount importance.

In these chord-based guitar lessons you'll learn how to play chords on a guitar for major and minor seventh chords, as well as various forms of ninth, eleventh and thirteenth chords. And how altering the fifth scale tone adds dissidence and how it wants to resolve.

In the next section of our guitar lessons, you learn about the role of the sixth chord, the sixth add nine, the dominate seventh, and many more.

In Total Guitar Chords Level 2, we'll take these complex chords' harmonic ideas and break them down for you. Unlike many free guitar lessons available online where you'll merely learn how to play guitar chords and how to finger the chord, we'll teach you the chord and how to use it in the proper context.   You'll learn how to play chords on a guitar and how to sweeten or add tension to your playing by adding the dramatic elements that these chords provide.

In these guitar lessons, we'll show you how to play guitar chords in six different real world progressions that will help you use and understand the usage of these "grown up" guitar chords.

Songwriters will appreciate these guitar lessons for the melodic ideas these complex chords unlock, and guitarist looking to someday to work in the studio will be prepared for the charts these composers present to them. As you progress through these chord-based guitar lessons you begin to realize what you once thought were exotic chords are in fact in common usage.

Don't settle for being an ordinary guitarist. Total Guitar Chords Level 2 gives you the tools to help you become a world-class musician.

Guitar Chords Jam Along

Apply your newly acquired knowledge with our Total Guitar Chords - Jam Along & Guitar Lessons.

A virtual band at your fingertips, you'll never be longing for someone to jam with. You'll diversify yourself by learning how to play guitar chords in a variety of styles and playing along with our easy to read guitar chord charts as you take this road trip through the great music cities of America.

Sit in with the band and learn how to play authentic Funk, with its characteristic rhythmic right hand strumming pattern and learn which extended guitar chords and patterns work best for highly stylized form of music that took its southern roots up to Detroit's Motown studios. We'll even give you a guitar lesson on a muting technique to add extra funk to your Funk.

And speaking of Southern roots, our Nashville-style Country Shuffle will introduce you to the easy swing feel and help you break away from the stiff "straight eighths" strum that is so easy for many beginners to lock into. You'll reinforce this swing rhythm and play it blue in our Blues guitar lesson with such a genuine feel that will have people think you grew up in Memphis.

You'll take that style with you to sophisticated uptown St. Louis, and using your extended chord repertoire to "comp" some Jazz into your blues.

On the famous Sunset Strip in Los Angeles you'll jam with the rock band using your power chords: The windmill strum, a la' Pete Townsend, is optional.

In the next guitar lessons, we'll send you up highway 101 to San Francisco where you'll be immersed in the summer of love and 60s-style Classic Rock, before you take the quick trip south to Monterey where you'll jam playing Jimi Hendrix-style Psychedelic Rock.

You'll travel over to Miami to play some Pop-Rock in the clubs, and then we'll jet on over to the Islands to infuse Reggae into your style of playing something you won't find in many guitar lessons.

Bringing it all home, you've learn how to play guitar chords in all these styles of playing and be ready for whatever music situation arises.