Guitar Chord Chart: Essential Open Chords
The essential open chords in one printable chart. Master these twelve shapes and you can play thousands of songs.
The first five
Learn C, G, D, A and E before anything else. Together with their minor partners (Am, Em, Dm) they cover the open-position keys of C, G, D, A and E — which is most of the acoustic songbook.
Barre shapes
The F shape above is your first barre chord: index finger across all six strings at the first fret. Move that shape up the neck and it becomes F♯, G, G♯… every major chord, one shape. Same trick works with the Am-shape and Em-shape for minor chords anywhere.