Hi, How you doing
Justin here
for our lesson: 132
which is the C chord.
The last of the big eight
which is, the main eight Open Chord shapes that you learn
when you are starting your guitar journey.
And this is the last one,
this is the C chord.
Now, a lot of people find the C chord a little awkward.
It's maybe not quite as stretchy as the G chord.
Well, at least not acrosswise
but it is lengthwise.
It's a little bit funny.
So let's go to a close up
and see if we can sort out the different ways of getting this stretch.
It is just a matter of practising it.
I've never ever-ever-ever had a student who's not been able to do it.
I have had students instead who really struggled
and they felt like they were never going to do it.
But, if you persevere
you will find that the C chord is pretty damn easy.
Let's have a look at it.
Here we are looking at the C chord.
Now, hopefully it doesn't look too bad
but it is a little bit of a stretch.
So, let's go through the problems and solutions for this chord.
So, first one :
first finger : first fret, second string.
Nothing on the E string, and nothing on the G string.
There's nothing on the first string, and nothing on the third string.
Second finger is reaching over here
to the second fret, at the fourth string.
And then, third finger's gonna stretch over here,
to the third fret of the fifth string.
Now, there are a few different tips we can give you
for getting this stretch nice
First of all,
if you play really square
like this,
it's actually quite difficult to do
with the fingers parallel to the frets.
I can feel that's stretching my hand doing that right now.
Now, if you look at the way that I'm doing it,
I'm kind of laying the fingers over a little bit.
Now, if I took my hand off,
they kind of that looks like that they are in a line,
they're all kind of touching each other.
And you can see that the angle now is kind of that way a little bit.
it's actually they're kind of pointing at my eyes.
Whereas that way they're pointing at the ceiling.
We just turn it round a little bit like that,
and you get a bit more of a...
It definitely makes it easier to play . Yeah ?
So this way, you really have to stretch the distance between your fingers.
Here, you're just changing how far each finger is reaching out.
That makes a big difference for that one.
Now, you can probably see that my thumb is flopping over there.
But actually, we want to get that thumb behind for you now.
Later on you can use your thumb over here,
but for you now, back behind.
Now, the other important thing with the C chord
is that we want to make sure
that the tip of this third finger
is muting, the sixth string.
So, it shouldn't press down on this string.
The very tip of the finger just touches the string
and stops it from ringing out.
Now, the thing that you'll find here with this chord as well,
especially when you're going to do the strum - pick up - strum,
is that there are quite a few places
where fingers can lean over and touch other strings. So,
. . .
There is the correct sound for it
Now, the first note, which is the fifth string,
you're probably not going to have too much trouble with it.
Pretty straight forward.
The next note,
here which is the fourth string,
it's very likely here that your third finger is going to be leaning over
and touching that fourth string.
So, that's the first thing you wanna look out for
is making sure that finger is nice and up.
Then we have the Open G string,
which, of course,
this finger, if it's leaning over a bit too flat,
will mute that G string.
First finger should be ok.
Not many people have trouble with that note.
But then, the open E string
if the first finger is leaning over a little bit too much
you'll get the open E string muted.
So, really, the trick with C chord is, one :
don't be too squared like this.
Allow your fingers to be a little bit of an angle.
And also to make sure that you're really on the points with the fingers.
Don't let them lay down too flat
or you'll just always be muting the strings next to them.
Ok, I hope you had fun stretching out for that C chord.
It's a little bit of a tough one
- but it's not that bad -
and it just seems impossible right now,
but, after a week or two,
your fingers will have all limbered up
and it'll be a lot easier.
After a month or two,
you'll wonder why you ever had a problem with it at all
because it's not that bad in the grand scheme of guitar chords.