D and reading a chord diagram
Okay. You've got Em, Am, G, and C in your hands now. Today we add D, and while we're at it I want to actually teach you to read a chord diagram instead of just copying my fingers off the top of my head. That's going to matter more and more as you go.
The D chord
D uses three fingers, and it's a little cramped compared to the others, but it's a good shape once it clicks.
- Index finger on the 3rd string, 2nd fret
- Middle finger on the 1st string, 2nd fret
- Ring finger on the 2nd string, 3rd fret
Strum the top four strings only. Strings 5 and 6 don't get played. That's the part people forget, they strum the whole thing and it sounds muddy, and it's not their fingers, it's just extra strings ringing that shouldn't be.
Rest your thumb behind the neck, same as always, and check that your fingers are landing on their tips, not flattened out across the strings. D is a tighter shape than G or C, your fingers are close together, so this is where you'll really feel if your hand is tense. Shake it out between attempts.
Reading a chord diagram
Here's the mechanics, since I've just been telling you finger by finger up to now and that's not going to scale.
A chord diagram is the neck of the guitar, standing up, like you're looking at it face on. The vertical lines are the strings, low E on the left, high E on the right. The horizontal lines are the frets, with the top line usually being the nut, thicker than the rest.
Dots on the diagram show you where your fingers go. Numbers next to the dots, if there are any, tell you which finger, 1 for index, 2 for middle, 3 for ring, 4 for pinky. An X above a string means don't play it. An O means play it open, no finger needed.
So for D, you'd see three dots stacked around the 2nd and 3rd frets, with an X above the two low strings and O's are the two open strings on top of the shape, all sitting in the bottom four strings.
I don't teach standard notation in this class. You don't need it to play guitar, and there's a whole camp of guitar folks who will argue with me about that, and that's fine, they can argue with me. Chords, tabs, and your own ear will take an adult hobbyist further, faster, than learning to read notes on a staff. Chord diagrams are the one piece of "reading" I think is worth your time, because every song you'll ever look up online is going to hand you one, and if you can't read it, you're stuck waiting on me.
Practicing the change
Same drill as always. Get D clean by itself first. Then practice switching into it from G, since that's a common pairing.
- Form G, strum once
- Lift and reform into D, strum once
- Back to G
- Repeat slow, then a little faster once it's clean
It'll be sloppy. D is fussier than G or C because your fingers are bunched up close, and going into it from a wide shape like G means your hand has to reorganize itself fast. Don't rush it.
I had my youngest, Santiago, camped out under the table again this week while I ran through chord changes, doing his thing where he hums along on purpose just off pitch to throw me off. He's seven, he thinks it's hilarious. But I'll be honest, it's not bad ear training, having a voice trying to pull you off your note while you hold your line. If you've got a kid or a spouse or a dog that makes noise while you practice, don't treat it as an interruption. It's actually useful. Learning to keep your hand doing its job while something else is happening in the room is a real skill, not just a guitar skill.
One thing to watch for with D specifically: because the fingers are close together, people tend to let the ring finger flatten out and mute the string next to it. Check that your ring finger is coming down on its tip, curled, not lying across two strings at once. That's the most common reason D buzzes or goes dead on the high string.
Before next time: get D clean on its own, then work the G to D switch slow, ten minutes a day like always. Don't worry about speed yet, worry about the dots landing in the same spot every single time.