YOUR Chord Book

We’ve all seen those massive books of guitar chords, but building your own is way better!


View the full lesson at YOUR Chord Book | JustinGuitar

Looks like all previous tips and tricks have disappeared with the introduction of the new community. As this helped me a lot putting my chord book together, here I share the link to the site Chordpic again with you.
Very easy to put your chord boxes up. Have fun with it:

https://chordpic.com/

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How do I decide whether to learn a chord I need for a song, or to give up on the song for now and leave it till later? Do I just leave any that use barre chords? Do I need to know what all the chord names mean?

Try to learn the chord if it’s to hard leave it for a few weeks
then try again until you can play it. If it take a few month or
more that’s not a big deal.
Having a goal above your play grade is something to shoot for

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Hi Joseph,

It depends on how long have you been playing. If you’re relatively new (say, you’ve been playing for less than 6 months), I would stick to songs with “regular” major, minor and sus chords. Those are more than enough for a start.

For a lot of barre chords you could probably figure out an open fingering. That would actually be a nice exercise to get familiar with the fingerboard. But again, if you’re new to the guitar, I think you should focus on open chords as recommended in the course. You will eventually meet the “dreaded” F chord but if your guitar is set up properly, it should not pose an unsolvable problem for you. And then there will be no way back, you will be able to play barre chords as well.

Regarding the chord names, my answer is a “yes” to both parts of your question. You have to know where the root note of the chord is, otherwise you will not know where to put your fingers. You also need to know what the nature of the chord is, e.g. major, minor, sus, augmented, diminished, etc. in order to ensure you play an appropriate chord for the key the song is in.

@BlackPhoton In this module you are learning 6-string barre chords starting with the one at first fret called F.
That same shape moved along the fretboard becomes new chords - fret 3 = G and fret 5 = A and more.
But, some barre chords are 5-string and you would need to know the difference. You will learn those in a later module.
If you are unsure of songs appropriate to your level of play, go here and use the filters by Difficulty
image

Hope that helps.

Cheers :smiley:

| Richard_close2u | JustinGuitar Official Guide & Approved Teacher

Made my chord book today, made a fancy cover using a stock image for my binder but my printer ran out of ink mid print haha. Still it’s done and I’m glad I have a reference for chords instead of going having to go back to videos where they’re introduced:

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Love the idea and the cover, hopefully it’s full of tasty licks!! :wink:

I take screen shots of the chord diagrams as I learn them and print them out. I put them in baseball card collector sheets. This lets me arrange the chords that I need for my practice sessions and I can copy/print various versions. Works well for me.

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So great to read so many innovative ideas of putting a book together. :smiley:

I noticed that you can add new chords to the chord dictionary in the free JG One Minute chord changes app. Available via the menu, the chord dictionary has a chord box editor for adding new chord boxes and you can add finger numbers to the dots in the chord box.

Hey Justin,

Thank you for recommending Neck Diagrams 2. It’s a fantastic visual supplement to your courses. I have used it to diagram chords for your Beginner course. I have also used it extensively in conjunction with your Theory course. Justin Dolezy, the founder of Neck Diagrams and your former student, has been extremely helpful with technical support issues.

Thanks for the great idea! I’ve already printed out the sheets for my chord book and about to start noting the chords. I’m curious if there is an easy way to see all the chords we’ve had lessons on so far on the website. I want to make sure I’m not forgetting any lesser played chords without having to re-watch every previous lesson. Thanks in advance :+1:

:pleading_face::pleading_face: