If you want to learn to play guitar chords you can buy a chord dictionary. These books contain every chord known to man, most of them you will never use. There are two common kinds or chord - the major chord and the minor chord.

All western music is based on the major scale. Let's take a look at the C major scale: C D E F G A B C. On the piano these are the white notes but on the guitar we have to find the note patterns and find ways of remembering them.

The lowest C note on the guitar is at the third fret of the fifth string, the next note, D is the open fourth string and the E is the second fret on the fourth string. The third fret on the fourth string is the F and then we move onto the open third string which sounds the note G. The the second fret of the third string is A, the open second string is the B note and the first fret of the second string gives us C which is the beginning of the next octave.

To play the C major scale using these frets, which is known as playing in the first position, use the first finger for notes that appear on the first fret, the second finger fro notes at the second fret and use the third finger for third fret notes.

Now you know the notes, all you need to do is practice every day. According to its basic definition a chord is a mix of any number of any notes but a major chord is the first, third and fifth note of a major scale. In the case of the C major scale the notes are C, E and G.

To play a C minor chord all you need to do is play the note E flat (written Eb) instead of the E natural note you played in the major chord. This applies to all keys. Always and everywhere, the major chord is the first, third and fifth notes of the scale and the minor chord, which has a sadder sound, contains the flattened third.

You can play scales and notes in all keys in the first position. If you haven't already, download a guitar fretboard diagram to show you where the notes are and some tabs or chord charts for some songs you want to learn. You will be learning open chords like the C major and C minor chords you just learnt and you have already found out how to work out where the notes are for your major and minor chords.

To save you some work you can download a collection of guitar chords but once you know how to find them for yourself, why not use your musical knowledge?