Oct 21 2008
How to read chord diagrams for the guitar
Tomorrow we will be working with chord diagrams, so I thought I would take today to do a quick refresher or intro for those of us who aren’t familiar with them.
A diagram of a guitar chord is a graphic that gives you an idea of what a chord should look like by using dots to represent your fingers and lines to represent the fretboard and strings. The horizontal lines represent the frets and the vertical lines represent the strings. It also provides you with suggestions of what fingers to use in which places by numbering the dots counting your index finger as the first and your pinky as the fourth.
The strings are in order from left to right 6E, 5A ,4D, 3G, 2B, 1E and there will often be a number next to one of the frets indicating the fret number depicted. If there is no fret number it is safe to assume the first fret in the diagram is the first fret on the guitar neck.
If you shouldn`t play a certain string it will be signified by an X above the first horizontal line and if you should leave a string open it will be indicated by an 0.
The above diagram would produce an A major chord. All the components of a basic guitar chord diagram are highlighted and explained. If you run into any more trouble with chord diagrams and how to read them, don`t be shy to leave a comment and I will try to help you out.
As always, Feel free to post any questions, corrections or recommend your favorite guitar chord diagram reference… 
