Beginner Questions - How Chord Charts Work (And Why I Hate Them)

My title might be a little clickbait, but I've always found the way chords are presented in chord books and on websites like Ultimate Guitar confusing for beginners.

Let me explain why.

I've attached two versions of With A Little Help From My Friends. One is my arrangement and the other is a typical chord chart from Ultimate Guitar.

When a band plays a song, all of the instruments are following the same underlying structure. The music is organised into bars, and most beginner songs are in 4/4 time, meaning each bar contains 4 beats.

When a chord changes, it will often happen:

• At the start of a bar (beat 1)

• Halfway through a bar (beat 3)

This is why counting is so important.

In my arrangement, you can clearly see exactly where the chord changes happen because the music is divided into bars.

We don't normally write the beat numbers on the music, but you can still see whether a chord comes in at the start of a bar (beat 1) or halfway through a bar (beat 3).

Once you understand that, it becomes much easier to know exactly when to change chord.

The problem with many online chord charts is that the chords are placed above the lyrics.

The chord is simply written above whichever word is being sung when the change happens.

This is useful for singers, but not always for guitar players.

The spacing between words doesn't tell you how long to hold a chord for.

A singer might squeeze lots of words into one bar, then hold a long note for two bars. Looking at the lyrics alone can make it seem like some chords last much longer than others when they actually don't.

So how should you use chord charts?

My advice is to listen to the song while looking at the chords.

Don't worry too much about following every lyric. Instead, try counting:

1, 2, 3, 4... 1, 2, 3, 4... and see if you can hear where the chord changes happen.

You'll quickly notice that in most beginner songs the changes happen at the start of a bar or halfway through a bar.

Once you can hear and count those changes, chord charts suddenly become much easier to follow because you're following the rhythm of the song rather than trying to guess from the spacing of the lyrics.

Have you ever been confused by chord charts?

Let me know in the comments.

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Beginner Questions - How Chord Charts Work (And Why I Hate Them)