How To Read Chord Diagrams
If you have never seen a chord diagram before it might be a bit confusing. In this guitar lesson we are going to take a look at how to decode chord diagrams. Take a moment to study the D major chord diagram to the right.
You should see six lines running vertically. Those lines represent the strings of the guitar. The line to the far left is the low E string and the line to the far right is the high E string. The horizontal lines represent the frets of the guitar.
The dots on the diagram represent note that should be played. If the dot is black that just means that note is the root of the chord. In this case the black notes would be D notes because we are playing a D major chord. The white dots are just other notes in the chords.
The numbers inside of the dots are just telling you which finger you should use to play the notes. If you will notice, the dot on the high E string is on the second fret and that dot has a 2 inside of it. All of this information is telling you that you should play the second fret of the high E string with your second, or middle, finger.
If you see a dot above a string on the chord diagram that simply means that you should play that string open. On the other hand, if you see an X above a string you should not play that string at all. The D major chord diagram has a dot above the fourth string and an X above the fifth and sixth strings. That means that you should play the fourth string open and not play the fifth or sixth strings at all.
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