Learn Acoustic Guitar: Acoustic Guitar Chords - The 3 Key Ingredients

The acoustic guitar is without doubt one of the most popular musical instruments, just about every household has one and many homes have two or three.
When played by an experienced guitarist the acoustic guitar offers a beautiful, almost transparent sonic backdrop to the musicians story.
Did you know there's three key ingredients that the experienced player brings in his or her guitar toolbox to transform average songs into magical soundscape's; let's go backstage and see how it's done.
Tip #1: Open strings - whether it's a steel string, 12 string or nylon strung guitar one of the key ingredients to producing a beautiful sound is the use of open strings. Bar chords may be a popular way of teaching guitar in class but bar chords are definitely not the way to go on acoustic guitar.
The trick is to learn chords in the guitar friendly keys of: G, D, A and E; then use the capo to produce neat sounding guitar sounds in keys that would normally sound dull and lifeless.
Here's how that works... keys like F, Eb Bb and Ab would ordinarily sound flat and be physically difficult to play (this is where the bar chords come in), however by placing the capo at various fret locations you can play easy guitar shapes that sound great; use the chart below to overcome boring sounding chords.
Capo at the first fret transforms...
G to Ab
D to Eb
A to Bb
E to F
Tip #2: Drone strings - you can further enhance you guitar friendly chords by employing "drone strings" these are special notes that are played over all the chords in a particular key, they produce the beautiful seamless quality heard on all professional recordings.
The concept is to play specific notes (the first and fifth notes of a key) over traditional chord shapes; because the chords now have certain notes that are "common" to each chord the changes sound smoother and more coherent to the listener.
Some examples in the key of E...
The key of E produces melodies and harmonies from the E major scale which contains these notes
E major scale: E - F# - G# - A - B - C# - D# - E
Drone notes are the 1 and 5 notes of that scale; therefore the drone notes for the key of E would be the notes "E" and "B"
[E] - F# - G# - A - [B] - C# - D# - E
[1] - 2 - 3 - 4 - [5] - 6 - 7 - 8
Drone notes indicated in brackets...
E
-0--[E]
-0--[B]
-1--
-2--
-2--
-0--
Drone strings create chords that are usually either a suspended 2nd or 4th; in this instance the standard "A" chord
shape has been transformed into an "A sus 2" chord.
A
-0--
-2--
-2--
-2--
-0--
-x--
A sus2
-0--[E]
-0--[B]
-2--
-2--
-0--
-x--
Tip #3: Slash chords - often traditional chord families are modified by way of slash chords.
The most common substitution is the slash chord with the 3rd in the bass.
Here's an example in the key of E...
The traditional chord [triadic - 3 note] family created from the"E" major scale produces these chords.
E - F#m - G#m - A - B - C#m - D#dim - E
Many contemporary songwriters alter the 3, 6 and 7 chords structures in the following manner...
E - F#m - [G#m] - A - B - C#m - D#dim - E
1 - 2 - [3] - 4 - 5 - 6 - [7] - 8
becomes...
E - F#m - [E/G#] - A - B - C#m - D#dim - E
1 - 2 - [3] - 4 - 5 - [A/C#] - [B/D#] - 8
E/G#
-0--
-0--
-4--
-2--
-x--
-4--
A/C#
-0--
-0--
-2--
-2--
-4--
-X--
B/D#
-0--
-0--
-4--
-4--
-6--
-X--
Notice how I have included the drone string in the chord shapes above; therefore their correct names would be...
A sus 2/C#
-0--
-0--
-2--
-2--
-4--
-X--
B sus 4 /D#
-0--
-0--
-4--
-4--
-6--
-X--
Compare the traditional chord family with the updated sounds, mix them up by only introducing one of the slash chord at a time to the standard chord family, that way you will become more aware of the subtle differences of our new chord substitutions.

Mike Hayes develops systems and products to help you succeed in your guitar playing. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular free ecourse.