FretSpider!

Chords are written and displayed in many many different ways for guitar. They can be as simple as just a letter below a bar of music, they could be in the form of a chord chart, or a series of notes within guitar tabulature, etc.

Firstly, we will look at chord charts. These informative charts show a diagram of a few frets of a guitar neck and the placement of your fingers on the strings for any particular chord.

Chord Charts

Here is a nice example of a chord chart for a C major chord.

The chart to the left clearly shows how a C Major chord is played. The six guitar strings are the six vertical lines that the notes are on, and the horizontal lines show where the frets are. – The top row of boxes is the first fret, 2nd row is the 2nd fret, etc.

As you will see by the photo on the right, this is the view from which the chart is facing. The same notes are displayed to show you exactly how it is displayed.

The numbers on the notes represent the finger you should use for each note. The hollow circles outside of the chart represent open notes, this is where the string is played with no fingers on it.

Variations of the chord charts are also fairly common. The diagram to the left shows how a bar chord on the 5th fret would be displayed. The number on the left of the chart shows which fret to start the chord on.

Once all fingers are in place, you would strum all strings simultaneously. See my chords lessons for more.

You would sometimes find these type of chord diagrams at the beginning of guitar tabs that contain complex or uncommon chords. Throughout the tab they would simply mention “Dm” for a D minor chord, you would then simply refer to the chart to learn how to play the chord.

For loads more info on guitar chords, check out the guitar chords where I show you many different chords and exactly how to play them.

Chords in Guitar Tab

The most common way chords are written down within guitar music are inside guitar tabs displaying both the notes and the chord name. Like this…

e|-----2----0----0----2-----------------------
B|-----3----1----1----2-----------------------
G|-----2----0----2----3-----------------------
D|-----0----2----2----4-----------------------
A|----------3----0----4-----------------------
E|--------------------2-----------------------
-------D----C----Am---F#

This shows the chord name below the chord, while also displaying each fret number in tab form of that chord.

It is also common for two guitars to be playing in a song at the same time, usually one playing the backing chords and one playing the melody. There are a few ways to show this.

Sometimes two guitar lines may be shown as follows, where both lines are played alongside each other with two guitars rather than played one by one.

GUITAR 1:
e|----------------/10-15-14-------------------
B|----------11b(13)---------------------------
G|--------------------------------------------
D|-----10/12----------------------------------
A|--------------------------------------------
E|--------------------------------------------

GUITAR 2:
e|-----2----0----0----2-----------------------
B|-----3----1----1----2-----------------------
G|-----2----0----2----3-----------------------
D|-----0----2----2----4-----------------------
A|----------3----0----4-----------------------
E|--------------------2-----------------------
-------D----C----Am---F#

These two guitar lines and above example could also be simply written as follows:

Backing Chords: D C Am F#

e|----------------/10-15-14-------------------
B|----------11b(13)---------------------------
G|--------------------------------------------
D|-----10/12----------------------------------
A|--------------------------------------------
E|--------------------------------------------

This would require you to know generally how the song goes to piece together the rhythms and timing.