D and reading a chord diagram
You've got Em, Am, G, and C in your hands now, which is real ground covered. Today we add D, and while we're here I want to actually teach you to read a chord diagram instead of copying my fingers off the top of my head. That skill is going to matter more and more as you go.
The D chord
D uses three fingers. 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, 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 across the strings. D is a tighter shape than G or C, your fingers bunched close together, so this is where you'll really feel it if your hand is tense. Shake it out between attempts.
Reading a chord diagram
Let's cover the mechanics, since I've only been feeding you finger by finger up to now and that won't scale.
A chord diagram is the neck of the guitar stood upright, as if 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, and the top line is usually the nut, drawn thicker than the rest.
Dots on the diagram show where your fingers go. Numbers beside the dots, when they're there, 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, an X above the two low strings, and O's over 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. There's a whole camp of guitar folks who'll argue with me about that, and that's fine, they can argue. Chords, tabs, and your own ear will carry an adult hobbyist further and faster than reading notes on a staff. Chord diagrams are the one piece of "reading" I think is worth your time, because every song you 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 on its own 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 at first. D is fussier than G or C because your fingers are bunched up close, and coming into it from a wide shape like G means your hand has to reorganize itself fast. Don't rush it.
My youngest, Santiago, was camped out under the table again this week while I ran chord changes, doing his thing where he hums along on purpose just off pitch to throw me off. He's seven, he finds it hilarious. But it's not bad ear training, holding your note while a voice tries to pull you off it. If you've got a kid or a spouse or a dog making noise while you practice, don't treat it as an interruption. It's genuinely useful. Keeping your hand doing its job while something else is happening in the room is a real skill, and not only a guitar one.
One thing to watch with D specifically: because the fingers sit so close, people tend to let the ring finger flatten out and mute the string next to it. Check that your ring finger comes 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.