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Easy Guitar Lesson - A Great Song To Learn For Beginner Guitar Players

The best way to learn any instrument is to learn to play some songs that you love listening to. Learning to play songs that you know and love, is much easier than trying to learn songs, or worse, exercises from a book that you don't like or aren't familiar with. As well as knowing how the song should sound, you'll can also play along with the recording which will help you learn to play the song in a short period of time.

So lets jump right in and look an extremely popular song which will hopefully be familiar to you.

An Easy Song To Learn - Knockin' On Heaven's Door By Bob Dylan

Knockin' on Heaven's Door is an absolute all time classic song. Its also one of the easiest songs to learn on the guitar. There are only 4 chords used in the song, these are: G, D, Am7, and C.The full progression of Knockin' on Heaven's Door is: G, D, Am7, Am7 and then G, D, C, C. This progression is repeated throughout the entire song.

The song has a really nice laid back feel to it and is a good tempo when you are first learning how to play chords. The chord changes will help you learn to move from one chord to the next.

See if you can play the chords to Knockin' On Heaven's door. There are some tips on playing chords from the song below as well as playing other chords and songs in general.

Some Basic Chords

The first chords you should learn to play on guitar are: G, C, D, E and A. Note that when you see the chord name G, what we are referring to is the G Major chord. That is the same for C, D, E and A. If you understand how to read guitar tablature (also referred to as tab) you can easily look up how to play those 5 chords on the internet.

The guitar tab for an A chord is as follows:

E|--0--
B|--2--
G|--2--
D|--2--
A|--0--
E|--x--

Note that the low E string (also referred to as the 6th string) is the string that is closest to your face. In the A chord above the low E string isn't being played, this is denoted by the x on the low E string.

The A string (often referred to as the 5th string) is played as an open string. Which is denoted by the 0 on the A string. The D or 4th string is being fretted on the 2nd fret, which is denoted by the 2 on the D string. The G or 3rd string is also being fretted on the 2nd fret, which is denoted by the 2 on the G string. Similarly the B or 2nd string is being fretted on the 2nd fret, which is denoted by the 2 on the B string. And finally the high E string is played as an open string, which is denoted by the 0 on the high E string.

In the song Knockin' on Heaven's Door, instead of playing an A Major chord you need to play an Am7 chord.

The guitar tab for an Am7 chord is as follows:

E|--0--
B|--1--
G|--0--
D|--2--
A|--0--
E|--x--

Notice that instead of fretting the G string at the 2nd fret you are taking your finger off the G string and playing the open string. Also note that you are fretting the 1st fret of the B string instead of the 2nd fret. Another point to take note of is how similar an A minor chord is compared with a C Major chord. If you were playing a C Major chord you would play the same notes as shown above for the A minor chord except instead of playing the A string as an open string you would fret the 2nd fret of the A string.

That's the Am7 chord. When you see a chord name with a letter followed by a 'm', the 'm' stand for minor. So if the chord stated is Am, then the chord is A minor. If there is a number after the letter(s), you then state the number followed by the chord name. So Am7 is called 'A minor 7'.

Chord Naming Examples

The chord C is usually just called 'C', but what we are referring to is the 'C Major' chord. The chord C7 is called 'C7'. The chord Cm is called 'C minor 7'. The chord G7 is called 'G7'. The chord G6 is called 'G6' and the chord Gm6 is called 'G minor 6'.

All you really need to remember when naming chords is that if you see the 'm' in the chord name, then the chord is going to be called a 'minor' chord.

What Do The Numbers In Chord Names Mean?

Numbers followed by chord names represent additional notes that you play from that chords scale, as well as playing the Major or minor chord. So the chord Am7 means that you play the A minor chord and also add the7th note (or degree) from the A minor scale. The chord G6 means that you play the G Major chord and also add the 6th note from the G Major scale.

Those additional notes add color to a chord. Chords with additional notes are sometimes called extended chords. However you don't need to get caught up in learning about extended chord when you are just starting out on guitar. Not only are there thousands of songs that only use Major and/or minor chords in the songs, but you can simply choose to not play the extended notes in any chords which have additional notes.

For example, if you see the chord G6, you can just play a G Major chord. G Major will have the main sound that the song requires. Even for Knockin' on Heaven's door above, instead of playing the Am7 chord, you could instead play an Am chord. The A minor chord in Knockin' on Heaven's door fits the sound of the song perfectly. The listener is not going to be thinking 'hey, they are playing an A minor chord and not an A minor 7 chord'. The A minor 7 chord does have it's own sound however it has a very similar sound to the A minor chord.

Next Steps - Learn More Songs

There is no question that learning songs is the best way to learn to play guitar, or any instrument for that matter. Learning to play songs teaches you new chords and is a lot more fun than just learning how to play chords on their own. Think about what your favorite songs are and look them up on the internet. If you put the name of just about any song followed by the word 'tab' into a search engine, you will usually be able to find several (sometimes hundreds) of websites that have that song, the lyrics and guitar tab that you entered.

A good aim is to learn one new song every week or every fortnight. If you learn one new song every fortnight you'll be able to play 20 songs or more within the space of a year. You'll learn how to play different chords and rhythms on the guitar and you will become a good guitar player. Most importantly you'll have a lot of fun. So get out there, find some songs to learn and start playing your guitar.