Easy Guide To Play A Major Guitar Chord In 3 Simple Steps

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A major Guitar chord is also sometimes commonly referred as A chord. This is another widely used open chord and is a basic chord for beginner level guitarists. This chord is typically played using 3 fingers and once you reach a certain level of expertise you can just play as barre chord with one finger.

A major guitar chord consists of 3 notes – A, C# and E. We will learn to play A chord in 3 simple steps.

Playing A Major chord in 3 simple steps

Take a look at the picture first to get an idea of the chord shape, and finger positions in the chord and then follow the 3 steps:

Step 1: Place your index finger or 1st finger in 2nd fret of 4th string (D string)

Step 2: Place your middle finger or 2nd finger in 2nd fret of 3rd string (G string)

Step 3: Place your ring finger or 3rd finger in 2nd fret of 2nd string (B string)

Now strum the bottom5 strings that is the open A major chord

Important points to remember while playing A major chord

You will have to stretch your third finger a little bit, with a little bit of practice this will be easy.

You will also have to arch or bend your fingers so that you don’t touch the other things. In case you touch the other fingers, then you will mute those strings and the notes from the muted strings will not clear it will be a ‘buzzy’ sound.

Shortcut or a Hack to Play A Chord

Once you have mastered the A major chord using the above method, you can just put the first or index finger and barre the 3 strings in 1st fret and play the A chord. Care should be taken that you don’t mute the E string or even if you mute make sure you dont strum the 6th string. However we suggest that this should be used once you reach a significant level of expertise in playing Guitar. For the time being you may want to follow the 3 step process we have explained in the beginning of this blog.