Guitar
Tuned E A D G B E, low to high. Every chord below opens on the neck as a shape you can actually hold, with the fingering written out and a button to hear it. Every scale opens as the positions it falls into. Nothing to sign up for, and nothing is a video.
The chords are worked out from the tuning rather than copied from a table, which is why they are right for guitar and not just for a guitar. Start with where the notes are if you are new to the neck — the pattern repeats every twelve frets, and that is most of what there is to learn.
- Each string is a fret count from the one below it. Here that runs 5 · 5 · 5 · 4 · 5 — the odd one out is string 2, which is fret 4 of string 3. That single exception is why a shape shifts as it crosses those two strings.
- The same note again, two strings over. 2 frets up from strings 6 and 5; 3 frets up from strings 4 and 3. Learn that shape and one note tells you four.
- E to F and B to C are one fret apart. Every other letter is two. Those two places are the landmarks — find them on a string and the rest of it follows.
- Twelve frets up is the same note. The whole neck is one pattern, played twice.
One note at a time, everywhere it appears on the neck.
There are only five major shapes, because there are only five open major chords. Here is C played as each of them, in the order they sit on the neck: C, A, G, E, D — and then round again. That order never changes, in any key. Learn where one shape is and the other four are already placed for you, which is the whole of what people mean by CAGED.
This is the part worth memorising. A shape with no open strings in it means the same thing wherever you put it — slide it up one fret and every note in it rises by one. These few cover every chord below; the rest of the page is only there to look one up.
All of them, in case you want a particular one. Each opens on the neck with its shape and a button to hear it — but the shapes above are the part you learn.