The Big Eight - Learning Your Basic Guitar Chords

Estimated completion time, 2-4 weeks.

Includes video instruction, 4 custom made backing tracks and chord charts.

If you’ve just started learning guitar, you will probably be excited about playing your favourite songs but are finding the chords quite tricky.

Most people find it difficult to get their fingers to do what they want and feel like they’re never going to get there, but they must stick with it!  With regular and accurate practice there always follows an improvement.

What should you learn first? Is there a correct order?

Not really a correct order however I do recommend to all of my students that they should learn these basic chords as soon as possible – what I call ‘the big eight’. You can play almost any simplified version of a song using these chords.

The ‘big eight’ will keep coming up in almost any song and if you don’t begin to get them down now, you will find that it will hold you up in the future.

It will take some time to master but if you can aim to get them sounding clear and committed to memory in 4 weeks, then you are doing well.

Your 4 step program – stay relaxed and have fun!

I have written this course with the chords being learned in the order that I feel makes the most sense to a beginner.

Each chord level moves up in difficulty and we will be looking at not only the chord itself, but the strategy of moving between chords, which is just as important. Step 1 may seem easy and take only a day or two to complete, but the others may take longer, depending on your rate of practice and experience.

Do not skip a week, give yourself the time to learn the shapes and the technique. You can complete the step if you have played along with the relevant track with almost no mistakes.

Step 1

E Minor and A Minor.

step 2

E Major and D Minor

step 3

A Major and D Major

step 4

C Major and G Major