lessons
lessons
How to Play C chord on Guitar
C Guitar Chord: Overview of How to Play
C Guitar Chord: Finger Placement
To play the C chord you'll be needing three of your fingers to fret the notes and that works just like this: On the fifth string on the third fret you'll place your third finger. And then on the fourth string on the second fret you'll place your second finger. You're going to skip right over one string which is going to be one of the open strings that form the chord. Then on the second string, first fret place your first finger. You leave the top E string open and there you go! It’s the C chord. I often tuck my pinky away here. In pictures or video if it looks like I'm playing a note with my pinky I'm not. I'm just kind of holding it out there or I'm tucking it out of the way. Chord chart here.
C Guitar Chord: Fretting Technique
One of the ways to make sure that you have proper hand position is to place your thumb on the center of the back of the neck. This forces your hand to come around the front of the neck into the proper position. You shouldn’t cock your wrist too much and it shouldn't be uncomfortable. In general, the guitar is a very ergonomic instrument so you can form a lot of chords in comfortable positions. What you may be struggling with initially is finger strength and muscle memory. Those are two things that will develop over time. But this C chord should be fairly comfortable to play in a short period of time.
C Guitar Chord: Theory Behind the Chord
Okay, here’s the theory part of the lesson. We’ll take a moment and cover C chord theory. In music, the C chord is made up of three notes. In other words, to get a major chord you only need three tones. Those notes for the C major chord are C, E and G. But we’re playing 5 notes in this guitar chord right? So if you only need three notes in order to play a major chord you might wonder, "well if we've got five strings here than what are we playing?" The answer is we are actually doubling a couple of the notes. The actual notes we’re playing in the C guitar chord are (low to high): we start off with a C. Then by playing the note with our second finger, we get an E. Then the first open string that we're playing is a G. We have ourselves another C by playing the note with the first finger. Finally, the top open string is an E. So what we've done is actually played our C triad (i.e. the C major chord) with the first three strings we play, and then we have a doubling of the chord. Makes me wonder if I could I just play a C chord with only the first three strings I played? And yes, it would technically make a C chord because you have the three notes required for a C chord. But when you're strumming the instrument, for a more pleasing sound you'll definitely want to play all five of the notes.
C Guitar Chord: Strumming Technique
The other option is to only strum five strings. In other words, when your pick comes down on the strings, you only strum the top five. Really though, I find it's nice to have that insurance policy of my thumb muting the string. It’s a safety net if you will, so the bottom note doesn’t ring out. But if you're having difficulty enough with just fretting the chord, wrapping your thumb may seem a little bit complex. It's not required, it's just something that I do in order to make sure that if I'm strumming real big, that I will not ring out that lower E note.
C Guitar Chord: First Inversion
Now you might ask what is the chord if we play all six strings and this bottom note rings out? Just try it. It doesn’t sound real bad does it? It sounds very close to a C chord. Properly stated, it's an inversion of the C chord. Imagine if you will, we have taken a C chord and flipped it around. The bottom C note takes a hop over the other notes and now this version of the C chord has an E note on the bottom. That's actually a separate chord altogether that we call C/E (a “slash” chord). So play this chord only if you want an E in the bass note, or the music calls for it. But typically when you’re playing C major you don't want that. It’s just not going to sound exactly right. Most especially if you are playing with other musicians or you are playing with a vocalist who has a certain melody line, a chord rooted in E may not work. That is unless the music calls for it (in other words, the composer wrote it that way).
C Guitar Chord: Review
So there you go that's the C chord! I encourage you to practice it. Just 5 minutes a day will work wonders in how you progress on the guitar. Soon you’ll be playing the C chord like a real pro and you’ll be ready to explore some of those more intermediate techniques like slash chords and wrapping your thumb over the neck to mute strings.
I also encourage you to check out one-on-one personal guitar lessons. Nothing beats getting one-on-one instruction. Yet since you’re here checking this out, look into more of our lessons on destinyguitar.com. A great place to move on to now that you know the C chord is the G chord or the Am chord. Have tons of fun learning the guitar, and remember, there are no shortcuts so just hang in there and soon your work will pay off!
Watch the video lesson here:
<h1>How to Play A/C# on the Guitar</h1>