A Major Guitar Chord Lesson for the Beginner

Learn how to play the easy basic beginner guitar chord A Major with this free tutorial.

The A Major Guitar Chord is found in the A Major Scale: A B C# D E F# G# A. It is made up of the 1 , 3 and 5 positions of this scale. In other words, the notes A,C# and E.

This chord does give some guitarists a bit of trouble, because all three fingers have to fit on the second fret on the second, third and fourth strings. This can be particularly difficult for those of us with larger fingers.

Below are three different versions of the A Major Chord . Learn all three versions to see which version is most comfortable for you. See the chord charts below to learn how to play this chord.

Make certain you are only strumming the first five strings as indicated in the diagram below. The Low E string is not played. Some guitarists will hang their thumb over the top of the neck of the guitar and mute the sixth string.

If you are unable to mute or avoid playing the Low E string, it really isn’t a big deal as the “E” note is part of this chord, so it won’t sound bad. The only difference with playing the low E string with this chord, is that the “A” is no longer the root or bass note of the chord. When this happens, the chord is known as an “inversion”, which means we are just changing the order of the notes a little.

A Major Chord Notes: A C# E