[GoldFever]

Hello. I was looking at some lessons around the web. I am confused at one place it says the G and the C cord is like this.

Then a diffrent one says play them like this. Which is right?

[Nichpo]

They are in fact both right. Notice the big X's on top of some of the strings in the second diagrams? That means "don't play those strings". So the first C and G are showing you the FULL chord and the second set is showing you half-chords. Half chords are often used if you don't want the put bass notes in your song, and it frees up a few extra fingers for noodling within the chord.

[allthumbs]

Yup, the same chord can have many shapes depending where you play it on the neck too. You usually learn the full chords first so that you can recognize the part chords when you see them. We call them chord fragments.

[Kirk Lorange]

Hi GoldFever.

A simple chord, like G or C, is made up of just three notes; a guitar has six strings. You can see therefore that the big six string version of a chord is going to have some duplicate notes in the pattern.

A full open G chord, as your diagram depicts, goes,from bass to treble: G B D G B G ... see the repetition? (GBD are the notes of a G chord.)

A full open C chord, as your diagram depicts, from bass to treble, goes: E C E G C E ... same kind of thing. (CEG are the notes of a C chord.)

So long as you have at least one of each required note, you have yourself a chord.

Click the 'Chords' link at the very top of the page for more info.