Starting to Play Music and More Chords

Hi everyone! In this post, I'm going to begin actually playing music as well as learning more chords. I have previously played piano for about 4 years so reading music wasn't very new to me, but it was good to refresh my memory.

"Important. The lines do not refer to the strings of the guitar" (Evans 39). This was definitely important to note because it was very easy for me to automatically think that, for example, the low e note was on the second to last string on the guitar simply because the stave (the lines that the notes are written on) looked like guitar strings. When playing certain notes on the guitar, it requires you to place your fingers on the correct fret and string. For example, the low g note is simply just the third string played by itself while the low a requires you to put your second finger (pointer finger) on the third string but on the second fret (Evans 40). Once I familiarized myself with the notes, I attempted to play the song shown below. I had to start of a little slow, but after practicing it a couple times, it was actually pretty easy.

Next, I continued to learn more chords. The first chord I tried to play was the F chord, which is used in many different songs. "Two strings are pressed at the same time by the 1st finger for this chord" (Evans 42). I found that playing this chord was exactly like the F and C notes I had played earlier so it was not very difficult to figure out.

It was important for me to notice that for the F chord, it's better not to play the chord with the fifth and sixth strings, as displayed by the two X's in the diagram. After the F chord, I moved onto playing the C chord, which is commonly found in many different songs as well. The C chord required me to not strum the fifth and sixth chords, similar to the F chord, so it was easy to get the hang of it.

A Minor chord

Do you think it is more difficult to play chords where you don't strum certain strings (such as the F chord) or chords where you strum all six strings?