OK, you don’t want to become the next great guitarist…at least not right now…
You want to grab your guitar and play along to yourself singing…
Or you want to play along to others singing at that party.
Don’t go buy a bunch of Books and Don’t go spending a lot of time.
In fact, you can understand the very simple song structure that will help you to play along to literally a TON of songs.
What are these. WHat if I told you that you could play to thousands of songs if you only learned what muscians call the I chord, the IV chord, and the V chord.
You woudn’t beielive me because you ain’t done it yet, but you know thousands of songs in the Blues and in pop and rock will be played with those three chords…
So a musician might say, “Let’s play Amazing Grace in A”….
Ok, let’s assume its a religious bunch…just stay with me…
So the key of A translates into the
First chord which we write as the I…and that is A
The fourth chord, which we write as the IV…and that is…well you don’t know…but you do know…You know your ABCs right…What’s the fourth letter in the alphabet?
That is D
OK so the IV is D
And then the fifth chord is…
you guessed it the Fifth letter in the alphabet
so the V is the E…
OK….So the I, IV, and V in the key of A is
A, E, D.
So now all you have to learn is 3 chords to play thousands of songs in the key of A.
So let’s get to work.
And you are going to do that by learning the A chord. The E chord. and the D chord.
Now you will be playing in the key of A. I am finding more and more that you can do a lot of Guitar Playing with just a few chords.
The first 3 chords I learned on the Guitar through Justin Sandercoe’s method were these there chords:
[jtab phrase=’A E D’]
I later found out that these are the three major chords that one plays when they are playing in the key of A.
these are the I, IV, and the V
With these three chords alone I am able to play and sing along to a ton of hymns and gospel songs.
Sometimes you need a vim and maybe a iim…to those I move to playing in G…
But my first try is always go to A and play the A, E, and D shapes…
And then grab the capo to push it to different keys…
This is basic self accompaniment playing…
By no means will this make you a “great guitar player”…but these three chords will set you on the road to being a decent self accompanist…
I guess that’s the first step to wherever you want to go on the Guitar.