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The Unique Characteristics Of Guitar Chords

Perhaps the hardest aspect of learning to play guitar, whether a classic acoustic guitar or an electric guitar, is the learning and handling of chords. In order to play quite a significant repertoire of songs, it is often only necessary to begin by learning a limited number of the basic chords. These quickly become familiar, at which time it then becomes possible to learn new chords, adding them to the number already known.

For beginners and those learning guitar for the first time, the challenge is not just in trying to remember the position of the fingers on the frets for each of the different chords, but there is also some difficulty in stretching the fingers across the width of the fret. Playing chords on guitar is as much a physical challenge as it is to one's memory, and a certain amount of strength is necessary in order to be able to simultaneously stretch the fingers across the fret, and also push the strings down firmly enough against the neck of the guitar to avoid any buzzing.

Chords played on a guitar can also be created in a number of different ways, and this can depend on whether the chord is played on all of the strings of a guitar - usually six in total, or whether it is just on a few of the strings at any one time. For some arrangements it may be necessary to only be playing a few of the available strings, and this can affect the way the chord is created using the frets. The differences in the way the chords are generated, in particular based on the number of strings being played, is usually referred to as being the different voicings available for the guitar or arrangement.

A standard six string guitar does present some problems in creating or playing chords, compared with those for other instruments. When compared to other instruments, having only six strings presents a number of limitations, since there are chord voicings for other instruments which would require slightly more than six different notes to construct the full chord. For this reason, in some of the larger chord arrangements, one or more of the tones which make up the chord have to be missed out. Usually the tone of the chord that is missed out is the root tone, or the fifth tone of a chord. Although this doesn't usually represent a problem, it is important to understand that a six string guitar will not be capable of as diverse a range of subtle chord arrangements as, say, a piano.

Another aspect of the guitar's chord arrangements which can present an unexpected challenge is the fact that as a result of the layout of the notes on the fret board it is not always possible for the chords to be set out in tonal order. This means that there is much more demand placed on the performer to remember to different chords and the layout of notes than to use a more expected, logical sequence. In addition, it is a unique characteristic of guitar based instruments that it is perfectly possible to play a number of chords with exactly the same notes being played, with the fingers placed in quite different positions on the fret board. This allows for a degree of personal preference and flexibility whilst playing guitar.

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