Eight open grips: a reminder, fingers included
Eight shapes that come back fastest, ordered from the easiest.
Adrian11 minupdated
After a break two or three shapes usually come back, the ones your hand puts down on its own, along with a feeling that the rest is somewhere. That rest is eight grips, not a thousand, and it is the whole list a campfire stands on.
Eight, because that is how many open grips there are, the ones where some strings ring open: Em, A, D, Am, E, G, Dm and C. Open strings are free fingers, which is why these are easier than barre shapes. The ninth is usually F, but F is not an open grip and it gets a lesson of its own.
This lesson does not teach them from scratch. It puts them in the order in which they come back fastest, and shows the pairs where the hand barely changes at all. Remembering goes twice as fast once you can see what is shared.
Eight grips, not a thousand
One of the books lists twenty songs played on these eight plus F and nothing else. Another, after only four of them (C, G, Am and Em), talks about hundreds. And that is the honest promise I can make you: not “you will learn some chords”, but “after these eight you have a repertoire”.
The Guitarmatic catalogue says the same thing from the songs side. The most common pair of grips in the whole collection is C and G. Among the pairs that need no F, next come D and G, Am and C, and Am and G. All four come from this set of eight and none of them needs a barre.
The order follows the finger stretch, not popularity
Books order the grips in three different ways and only one gives a physical reason. Laughton sorts them by finger stretch. Em and A fit on a single fret, D on two next to each other, Am, E and G stretch the hand across two, and Dm and C across three. It is the only order I have found in the books that does not read as “because that is how it is usually taught”.
The second rule, from another book, is the number of fingers, and it lands in almost the same place. Em takes two fingers, each of the other seven takes three. So Em is first, and E usually comes back with it even though it belongs to the second group: E is Em plus the index finger on the third string, first fret.
In the table the fingers are written in shorthand: finger number, then string over fret. “1: 2/1” means the index finger on the second string, first fret. You count the strings as usual: the sixth is the thick E, the first is the thin e.
| grip | fingers | how many | bass string |
|---|---|---|---|
| Em | 2: 5/2 · 3: 4/2 | 2 | sixth, open |
| A | 1: 4/2 · 2: 3/2 · 3: 2/2 | 3 | fifth, open |
| D | 1: 3/2 · 2: 1/2 · 3: 2/3 | 3 | fourth, open |
| Am | 1: 2/1 · 2: 4/2 · 3: 3/2 | 3 | fifth, open |
| E | 1: 3/1 · 2: 5/2 · 3: 4/2 | 3 | sixth, open |
| G | 1: 5/2 · 2: 6/3 · 3: 1/3 | 3 | sixth, 3rd fret |
| Dm | 1: 1/1 · 2: 3/2 · 3: 2/3 | 3 | fourth, open |
| C | 1: 2/1 · 2: 4/2 · 3: 5/3 | 3 | fifth, 3rd fret |
Common finger, guide finger, bass note first
The books offer three things for a chord change and you will find all three inside these eight. A common finger sits in the same place in both grips and never lifts. A guide finger slides along the same string by a fret without losing contact. The bass note rule covers the case where there is neither: put the fingers down starting from the thickest string you play, because the strum starts at the top anyway.
The examples in the books are specific. Em and Am can share the middle finger on the fourth string, second fret. Am and C share two fingers, so only the ring finger moves. The guide finger is clearest in A to D: the ring finger slides along the second string from the second fret to the third and never leaves it.
Your fingering is not fixed for life, which is something to use rather than trivia. One of the authors gives three fingerings for G and a rule for choosing: take the one that shares a finger with the next chord. Em works the same way. Middle and ring give you E almost for free, because you only add the index; index and middle give you a shared finger with Am instead.
Four pairs where the hand barely changes
Am and E are the same three finger shape moved across by one string towards the thick ones. Nothing gets rearranged, the whole thing travels at once. The exercise in the app puts it in one sentence: “The same three finger shape moves across by one string. The hand does not change shape, only place”. This is the pair you get back first after a break.
Am and Dm: the index finger stays on the first fret and moves across by one string, from the second to the first. The app says the same and adds what it is for: “The index finger stays on the first fret and moves across by one string. The pair for songs in a minor key”.
Em and D is a jump from the thick strings to the thin ones: in Em the fifth and fourth strings are fretted, in D the third, second and first. There is no common finger, but that is not what matters here. “The whole hand moves from the thick strings to the thin ones. You practise the jump, not rearranging fingers”.
C and G is the fourth pair and the most useful, because it is the most common one around a campfire. The ring finger does not change fret, only string: it crosses from the fifth to the first and stays on the third fret. If you only practise one pair this week, make it this one.
Clean or not at all: play it string by string
The test is the same for all eight: put the grip down and play the strings one at a time. Every one has to ring. A buzz has four causes and you can check each one in a minute. Three are about the finger: too little pressure, too far from the fret, or lying flat against the string next to it. The fourth is simply not enough strength in the fingertips yet.
Press with the fingertip, not with a flat finger, and close to the fret but not on the wire. Four books out of five say to sit right against the fret, the fifth says “in the middle of the space”. The difference is smaller than it looks: the point is that the finger must not land halfway back towards the previous fret, because then the string buzzes.
And the crosses. In Dm the two thickest strings are out, in C and Am the sixth, in D the two thickest. If you catch one, you will not ruin the song, but the chord stops sounding the way it does on the record, because the bass comes from the wrong note.
What confused me
I thought eight grips meant eight things to learn. I learned them as eight pictures and still stopped at every change when I played, because I built each one from nothing. Once I saw that Am and E are one shape in two places, and that Am and Dm share the index finger, half the list stopped needing to be remembered.
The second thing: “common finger” sounded to me like advice for advanced players. It is a hinge. As long as one finger stays put, the hand knows where it is and does not look for the grip from scratch. Without it every change begins with the question of where you actually are.
Do this now
Exercise: Chord Changes, the pair Am and E.
The same three finger shape moves across by one string. The hand does not change shape, only place.
Goal: a clean round at ♩ = 80, meaning eight bars with the hand never stopping.
Then the pair for songs in a minor key, where the index finger stays on the first fret.
Play this
two songs with no barre in themHej sokoły (Am, E, G, C) and Morskie Opowieści, the Polish version of Drunken Sailor (Am, G, Em, C), stand on grips from this lesson and nothing else. Both count in four, both have Am and E in them, and neither contains an F.
» I have known these eight grips for twenty years, why would I need a lesson about them.
Knowing a shape is not the same as landing on it in time. Open Chord Changes on Am and E and do one round at ♩ = 80. If it works first go, this lesson is a reminder and the next one is waiting. If it does not, that is exactly the thing to practise, and the number of grips you know does not show it.
Read on
- Beginner Guitar Chords in Theory & PracticeSean Laughton, “Practice: Em, A & D”, “Efficiency”, “The Power Of 9 Little Chords”This is where the order by finger stretch comes from, along with common and guide fingers and the list of songs played on open grips alone.
- Learning to Play GuitarColin McAllister, lectures 3, 4 and 9The author shows common and guide fingers on named pairs, and gives the rule for choosing which fingering of G to use. It is a Great Courses series.
- The Best Beginner Guitar BookJake Posko, “Mistake 1” and “Mistake 2”It shows in photographs the two mistakes that make a string go dead or buzz: a finger lying flat and a finger too far from the fret.
- Guitar chordWikipediaIt gives a neutral list of the open chords, the same eight as here, and explains why B and F are normally played as barre shapes.
- Barre chordWikipediaIt covers what comes after these eight, and admits that the barre can be the hardest thing you meet at this stage.
- Lessonsmusictheory.netGo to the “Diatonic Chords” and “Chord Progressions” sections if you want to know why these particular grips like standing next to each other in songs. It is free.