More guitar for beginners - 6 chords in the Ay Oh song

Based on web searches, it looks like one of the most popular posts I've put up the one for good guitar songs for beginners from a while back.

In the spirit of learning to play guitar I wanted to post the chords used in the song I worked on over last weekend and posted in the previous post.

There are only 6 common chords for this entire song: Em, D, C, Am7, G and A

Really the only odd voicing used is playing the D chord form using the low strings instead of the more normal high strings. This is done to support the bass line which walks upward on the low E string from open string to the 2nd fret (F#) to 3rd fret (G) to the 5th fret (A).


-Em--D---C---Am7----Em

-x----x----0----0------x-----
-0----3----1----1------0-----
-0----2----0----0------0-----
-2----0----2----2------2-----
-2----0----3----0------2-----
-0----2----0----0------0-----

Play 2 bars of Em (8 beats), 2 bars of D (8 beats), 1 bar of C (4 beats), 1 bar of Am (4 beats), and 2 bars of Em.

The second time through play the same progression except when you get to the last 2 bars where the Em is there's some quick chord changes where the Em is: play 2 bars of Em, G, A, G, If you listen in the song you'll hear it.

-Em--G---A---G---- repeat

-x----x----x----x----
-x----x----x----x----
-x----x----2----x----
-2----0----2----0----
-2----2----0----2----
-0----3----x----3----

After you've learned the chords you can click HERE and play along, or click HERE to download.

I didn't do a very good job of recording the acoustic guitar part in this song, but you can hear it jangling along in parts to hear the rhythm of the strum, or just play it however you like. I may rerecord it better in the near future taking care to do a better job with mic placement.