G and D Major Guitar Chords

G and D Major Guitar Chords

Learn Your Open G and D Major Guitar Chords!

If you are a complete beginner this will be an exciting lesson for you because you are going to learn two of the chords that you will need to know in order to play “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. Those two chords are G major and D major. Both of these chords are “open” chords. Open chords simply refer to chords that are played mostly on the first three frets of the guitar and have at least one open string ringing out when the chord is strummed.

Go through both the G and D chords slowly and memorize the shape as best as you can. It may take a while for your hands to remember the chord shapes but if you practice regularly you will eventually have them down cold. Your fingers might not have enough strength to make great sounding chords right away but practice and repetition will pay off in the end. Your fingers will probably get pretty sore after a few days of playing but if you are faithful to your practice the pain will eventually go away.

Make sure to remember everything you have learned in the right and left hand guitar technique lessons. To the right are the diagrams for the G major and D major chords. If you don’t know how to read chord diagrams yet you can take this lesson on how to read chord diagrams. 

Remember to curve your fingers around and come down on the very tips of them. If you don’t come down on the very tips of your fingers they might mute the neighboring strings and make your chords sound buzzy and ugly. Try your best to make these guitar chords as clean and smooth sounding as possible. Good luck and get ready to learn an A minor 7th and a C major in the next beginner guitar lesson!