Guitar Chord Charts

Guitar Chord Charts are one of many ways to visually show how to play (fret) guitar chords. It is a 'grid' of the fretboard with dots showing you where to place your fingers. Charts can also be called frames or grids or boxes.

The chord name will appear above the chart:

Chord Frame Symbols

You'll more commonly see chord charts oriented vertically, rather than horizontally (like above), especially in songbooks. Ultimately, once you know a chord, you don't need a picture of it, yet, sometimes the type of voicing for a particular chord in a song can be helpful when shown in a grid (typically at the beginning of a tune), sometimes inline, above the music.

You may sometimes see the fingerings inside the dots, or along the bottom of the strings. Vertical chord frames are most common, yet you'll see that there is a trend moving towards horizontal grids. Why? Because they are configured in the same orientation as tablature & music notation (up is high, down is low).

It is also not difficult to look at a frame in any orientation, once you are familiar with it. Turn it any direction you need. We recommend you move away from reliance on chord frames, & towards an internal referencing system (your library of fretted chords). Also, since chord charts are dominantly right handed, they are excluding left handed players, unless a given source provides a left handed version.

Chord & fretboard charts are very helpful in learning how things look visually on the guitar. We do recommend you print some blank grids, & map stuff out on your own. Most of what you see on this site was formed by a pencil. We can then move it to the hands, to our memory, & then to pure knowledge, or non-reference-point playing. These are simply maps, reference points, to guide us to the non-reference zone (the flow state).

Guitar Chord Charts: CAGED