About this issue
Why this chart.
The Open Position Chord Chart focuses on the most important chord shapes a guitarist learns: the open chords played in the first three frets without a barre. These are the chords that unlock thousands of songs — Bob Dylan, Taylor Swift, the Beatles, Oasis, Tracy Chapman, every campfire singalong.
The chart is intentionally compact: just the major, minor, and dominant 7th forms of C, D, E, F, G, and A. That's 18 shapes, sized large enough to read across the room. Every diagram shows finger numbers and the X/O markers that tell you which strings to mute or play open.
Open chords let your strumming hand do its job — driving rhythm, syncopation, dynamics — while your fretting hand cycles through familiar shapes. Mastering these eighteen chords is the single highest-leverage move a beginning guitarist can make.
How to use it
Print at letter and tape it to your wall. Practice each shape until you can place all your fingers simultaneously (not one at a time) and strum cleanly. Once you can transition between any two open chords in under a second, you can play more songs than you realize.