Learning where to put your fingers to form guitar chords is not a problem. There are plenty of chord charts and tabs available online and in books. Learning how to play the chords usually presents the learner guitar player with a challenge or two.
A newbie guitar player watching a guitarist who has already acquired some technical expertise is always impressed with the ease that he can move his fingers from one position on the fretboard to another and from one chord shape to another. First attempts at emulating these guitar skills usually leads to frustration and questioning the wisdom of continuing to learn to play the guitar.
This stage of frustration can easily be worked through by regular daily practice. Fooling around with single note melodies is one way of getting some familiarity with the guitar, regular practice of chord changes is another way.
There are two basic types of chords – open chords and barre chords. Open chords are played at the “top” of the guitar fretboard, within the first three frets. This means you are fretting some notes while making use of open strings for other notes in the chords.
For instance, in a C major chord, you can play the G note on the sixth string at the third fret, the C note on the fifth string at the third fret, the E note on the fourth string at the second fret, the G note on the open third string, another C note at the first fret of the second string and finally, the E on the open first string.
If you learn open chords first, followed by the basic barre chord shapes you will learn that on single combination of notes can sound drastically different played at different places on the neck and with varying combinations of open and fretted strings.
Most guitarists find barre chords a major challenge because of the pressure needed to produce a clean sound but open chords are sometimes difficult for novice guitar players due to the tendency of the left hand fingers to “collapse” towards each other causing muffled notes.
These kinds of technical problems are often caused by the guitarist pressing on the strings with the pads of the left hand fingers rather than the tips. Also care should always be taken to practice chord shapes with the fingers pressing behind the frets rather than on top of them.
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