How To: Play chords on acoustic and electric guitars

Checkout this helpful interactive tutorial for learning acoustic or electric guitar. See how to learn chords for acoustic and electric guitars. The Guitar Chords section allows you to choose between electric or acoustic guitar, find any number of chords and hear them played on the virtual guitar.

You can make up your own chords and store them for later use. The Chord Search facility helps you to identify chords, for both left and right handed players.

Tuning:

If you leave the guitar in standard tuning, 'standard' will be displayed here. You can edit the tuning to 4 semitones up and down from standard. You can save chords with alternative tunings. The tuning preference will not be saved and will return to standard when you return.

The chord library is in standard tuning so this feature is more for your own experiments.

Capo:

You can turn the capo on and off like a real guitar, which will raise the pitch of any open strings. You can save chords made with a capo.

Hand:

Choose to display chords in right handed or left handed mode. This preference is saved for your next visit.

Vol:

Select your volume level, this is a stored preference.

Strum:

When using the Strum button, this controls the speed, this is a stored preference.
Guitar:

The acoustic is loaded by default, but you can select electric, or go between the two. this is also stored.

Playing:

This shows the notes that are playing at any time on the guitar fretboard. (notes that can be either Sharp '#' or Flat 'b' but sound the same are both displayed. In music notation the key of your song would determine how you choose if the note is sharp or flat.

Chord Search:

If you create a custom chord, the display changes to '?' and a 'search' >> button appears. If you click here we will try to find the name of the chord and also show alternative names for the chord.