Chord Diagrams

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Chord Diagrams are basically diagrams that show you which notes (strings and frets) to hold down to play a specific chord. The diagrams will either be in a legend at the top or bottom of a song chart OR the chord diagram for the specific chord will show directly above the staff, tablature, or lyrics of a song as shown in the image below. 

Note that the chord name appears above the chord diagram. The diagram is made up of the following parts: The Strings (from thickest to thinnest in descending order from left to right), the nut location, the frets and the black dot showing which fret to place your fingers on. Note that in the image below, I have also include the fret markers so that you can better orient yourself if you compare it to a guitar neck however the fret markers don’t usually show on chord diagrams as they are too similar to fret notes. 

The chord diagram below shows how a chord will look. Strings that do not have a black dot on them (in this case : string 6) are not to be played. 

Here are a few more examples of various diagrams. The white circles above the diagram indicate that the string is open … which means there are no frets that are to be held down. You would still strum this string however you are playing the note that the nut represents.