Difference between revisions of "Ref: Reading Chord Charts, Scale Maps, and Strumming Notation"

Revision as of 12:08, 13 August 2014

Chord Charts

Chord charts use the following symbols to indicate which fingers to use to make the chord:

• t - thumb
• i - index
• m - middle
• r - ring
• p - pinky
• o - open

Chord charts typically use double bars to represent the nut and single bars to represent the frets, with perpendicular single bars representing the strings. If the double bar is not present, there is a number indicating the first fret for a chord further up the fretboard, which may still use open strings. If neither the nut nor the fret number are shown, there must be no open strings - the shape is not tied to a particular root note and can be played anywhere on the fretboard.

Traditional Chord Charts

Traditional chord charts use a horizontal double bar to indicate the nut, with single horizontal bars representing the frets. The lower the bar in the chart, the higher the fret number. The vertical bars are the strings, going from left to right as the thickest to the thinnest strings.

E Major chords in traditional chord chart
o   oo    o
======    ------
|||i||   7|i___i
------    ------
|mr|||    ||||||
------    ------
||||||    ||rrr|
------    ------

Tab Friendly Chord Charts

I prefer to use a more tab-friendly view of the same information. Everything is the same as above, but rotated 90° counter-clockwise. Frets numbers ascend from left to right. The bottom horizontal line is the thickest string and top line the thinnest.

o||-|-|-|    |i|-|-|
o||-|-|-|    |)|-|r|
 ||i|-|-|    |)|-|r|
 ||-|r|-|    |)|-|r|
 ||-|m|-|    |i|-|-|
o||-|-|-|   o|-|-|-|
              7