3-String Chords
Have you ever wondered how the great guitarists move so quickly and easily around the fretboard? They’re not holding down five or six strings at a time—and they sound great!
The secret to that fluidity is in 3-string chords. Once you learn them, the fretboard will open up to you and you’ll begin to understand more about the guitar than you might imagine. And you won’t be restricted to three strings—you may choose to use four, or even two!
Chord Shapes from First Position Chords
You’ll need to learn all of the chord shapes on the next two pages. It’s a lot easier than it may appear, because there are only two shapes that occur repeatedly in each set and they’re all from first postion chords. If you don’t now your first position chords (and know them well!), go back and learn them now. The best way to do that is by learning the songs in Getting Started.
If you feel you know them but want to be sure you haven’t missed any, you can do that using the chord chart below. Avoid using it as a reference, though—you’ll need to have these chords memorized to get the most from them. And don’t underestimate the power of these basic chords—they provide the foundation for everything you’ll ever want to play on guitar.
Here are the first position chords. You won’t use all of them in this course, but you’ll benefit from knowing them, not just when you go more deeply into 3-string chords, but for everything you play.
Here’s a short video of me demonstrating them:
Understand Barre Chords
You’ll also need to understand how barre chords work for playing chords up the fretboard. If barre chords are hard for you to play, don’t worry. You don’t need to have mastered playing them to play 3-string chords. In fact, playing 3-string chords can often save you from the pain of barre chords! But you do need to understand how they work. You can learn that or review it in this lesson.
To understand how you can use the first position chords to play 3-string chords, start visualizing your first string chords broken up into string sets. Take a look at the A chord, for example, and extract the first three strings, then isolate strings 2, 3, and 4, and then strings 3, 4, and 5. Practice doing that with the following chords: A, Am, C, D, Dm, E, Em, F, and G.
Finding Notes on the Fretboard
Last but not least, you’ll need to be able to find notes on the fretboard. Don’t worry if you’re not fast locating them quickly—you’ll get faster as you practice your barre chords and, especially, your 3-string chords. I teach my favorite way to find and learn notes efficiently in this lesson.
Get Moving!
Once you can clearly see the small shapes within the larger shapes, start moving them up the fretboard, in the same way you would a barre chord. Say the chord name as you go (A, A# or Bb, B, C, etc.).
Finally, begin combining the chords on different string sets, so that you can play them close to another, as opposed to only moving linearly on the fretboard. You can see how I do that in this video.
