The first year on the guitar — which five chords, and in what order

Five chords and what they cover

The five open chords that make most song accompaniment possible are E, A, D, G and C major — plus, as an extension, the minor forms E minor, A minor and D minor, which arise from the same shapes by moving or lifting one finger.

With E, A and D alone you can already play the main cadence in three keys, because A is the subdominant of E, E the dominant of A and D the subdominant of A. Add G and C and the four commonest song keys are covered — and with a capo all twelve, without a single further shape.

That is why songbooks are nearly always notated in G, C, D or A. It is not a musical preference but a property of the instrument: in those keys the open strings fall conveniently and the shapes need no barre.

The order that hurts least

The first shape is E minor: two fingers, both at the second fret, no contortion. Then E major, which merely adds a third finger. Then A major, where three fingers have to fit side by side in the same fret — the first real hurdle, and for people with broader fingers one you are allowed to dodge with an alternative fingering.

D major is the first shape using only four strings; here the right hand has to learn to leave the low strings out. A minor and C major come next, because they share a hand shape — for C only one finger moves to the A string, so anyone who can play A minor gets C almost free. G major comes last on purpose, because it spreads the fingers furthest.

A word on the barre: the F major shape is the point at which most people give up — and it does not belong in the first six months. As long as a capo is on the shelf, any song can be accompanied without it. The barre is a question of hand strength, and hand strength builds over months, not through willpower.

The change is the actual work

Fingering a chord is learned in two days. Changing between two chords in time takes weeks, and that is what the whole first year is about. The most effective exercise is change counting: for one minute, switch back and forth between two chords as often as possible without strumming, and count the changes. On day one it might be twelve; after two weeks, thirty. That number is the most honest measure of progress available this year.

Two details make the difference. First: leave shared fingers in place. From A minor to C only one finger moves; lift the whole hand and reset it and you do three times the work. Second: put all fingers down simultaneously, not one after another. It feels impossible at first and is the only route to a change in tempo.

For the right hand the rule is: the strumming rhythm continues even if the left hand is not ready. Better a scrappy chord in time than a clean one out of time. That is the same rule as in sight-reading, and beginners find it just as hard.

What defeats most people in month three

There is a reliable point at which guitar learners stop, and it falls around the third month. Until then everything has improved quickly; after that the curve flattens, because the remaining work lies in changes and stamina rather than in new shapes. Knowing that in advance makes stopping less likely.

The second reason is physical. Fingertips hurt for the first two to three weeks, until the skin thickens. That is normal and passes — provided you practise briefly every day. Practise for an hour once a week and you keep soft fingertips and permanent pain.

The third reason is the instrument itself. A guitar with an action set too high makes fretting unnecessarily hard, and many beginners take the effort for their own incompetence. A set-up at a repairer costs little and can decide whether someone stays with the instrument — one of the few places where money genuinely helps.

And a fourth, rarely said out loud: songs that are too hard. Attempt a piece with seven chords and a barre in month two and you will fail predictably. The first songs should manage with two or three chords. There are more of those than you would think.

From practice

Start with a single chord and a song that manages with it. That sounds like very little and is the fastest route to a sense of achievement: after ten minutes somebody is accompanying a song. From then on it is about extension rather than about starting — psychologically an entirely different state.

As public-domain material, folk songs with chord symbols work particularly well, because most manage with three chords and the melodies are familiar. Anyone who knows the tune hears at once whether the accompaniment fits.

For practice, concrete numbers work better than minutes: “ten clean changes from G to C” instead of “practise for fifteen minutes”. That often takes only four minutes and is more effective, because it has a checkable ending. And it can be done daily — which in the first year on this instrument matters more than the length of any single session.

One last piece of advice that has nothing to do with technique: the guitar belongs visibly in the room, not in its case under the bed. Whether practice is daily or weekly is decided, in the first year, almost entirely by how many actions lie between the decision and the first note.