Guitar lesson
Printable Guitar Chords Chart (PDF) — How to Use It
Print the free guitar chords chart as a PDF, then learn how to read it — open chords, moveable shapes and the fastest way to use the chart in a song.
A chord chart is the guitarist’s map. Whether you are learning your first three chords or hunting for a voicing you have never played, one well-organised chart replaces an entire book.
Prefer paper on the music stand? Download the full chart as a printable PDF — 36 essential chords across three A4 pages, from the open C, G and D shapes to the barre forms of F and B. Print it, pin it above the desk, and tick chords off as they land under your fingers. Need empty boxes to write your own shapes into? Blank chord charts and TAB paper print straight from the browser.
What is in the chart
The 36 chords are grouped by root note, four to seven per root, in the order you are most likely to meet them:
| Root | Chords in the chart | Count |
|---|---|---|
| C | C, Cm, C7, Cmaj7 | 4 |
| D | D, Dm, D7, Dmaj7, Dm7, Dsus4, Dsus2 | 7 |
| E | E, Em, E7, Emaj7, Em7, Esus4 | 6 |
| F | F, Fm, F7, Fmaj7 | 4 |
| G | G, Gm, G7, Gmaj7, Gsus4 | 5 |
| A | A, Am, A7, Amaj7, Am7, Asus4, Asus2 | 7 |
| B | B, Bm, B7 | 3 |
The layout is deliberately twelve cards per page, three columns by four rows. That is small enough to print on one sheet and large enough that the diagrams stay readable at arm’s length on a music stand.
How to print it properly
- Open the PDF and choose your paper size. The chart is laid out for A4; on US Letter choose “fit to page” rather than “actual size” so nothing is clipped.
- Do not scale up. The diagrams are vector-sharp at 100%, and enlarging them past A4 pushes the last row onto a fourth page.
- Black and white is fine. The diagrams carry their meaning in line weight and filled dots, not colour, so a mono printer loses nothing.
- Print one page at a time if you are laminating. Three single sheets on a stand beat one double-sided sheet you have to flip mid-song.
How to read the diagrams
Every diagram on this site follows the same convention:
- Vertical lines = strings. Left to right: E (low), A, D, G, B, E (high).
- Horizontal lines = frets. The thick top line is the nut; a number beside the diagram shows the starting fret when the shape moves up the neck.
- Dots = fingers. The number inside the dot tells you which finger to use (1 = index).
- X = don’t play that string. O = play it open.
- A bar over several strings = one finger frets them all (a barre).
The full guide to reading chord charts walks through a diagram dot by dot, including the position marker that tells you a shape has moved up the neck.
The essential chart: open chords
The open-position chords — C, A, G, E, D and their minor forms Am, Em, Dm — use open strings and stay within the first three frets. They are the heart of the beginner chart and appear in the diagram wall above.
Nine shapes out of 36 carry most of the songs you will play in your first year. If you want a learning order rather than a reference list, the basic chords guide sequences them by finger count and stretch.
Moveable shapes: one chart, every key
Barre chords are shapes with no open strings, so the whole pattern slides up and down the neck. The E-shape (root on the low E string) and A-shape (root on the A string) give you every major, minor and seventh chord in existence from just two forms. Learn the shapes at fret 1 (F) and fret 2 (B) and the rest of the neck is the same shape moved up.
This is the part a printed chart cannot fully capture, because it is a relationship rather than a list. The major chords guide has the full fret map: which fret of which shape produces all 12 major chords, and the barre chords guide covers getting them clean.
Three ways to actually use the chart
As a learning checklist. Work down one root at a time. Play each chord, check every string rings, and mark the ones that need work. A chord you can fret but cannot change into does not count as learned, so tick it only once it appears in a song you can play through.
As a songwriting reference. When a progression sounds stuck, the chart is a menu of substitutions: swap the plain major for its maj7, or the minor for its sus4, and the same progression changes colour without changing function. The chord progression generator will play the result back before you commit to it.
As a decoding tool. Hear something on a record and cannot name it? The chord identifier takes the frets you are playing and names the chord, which is the chart read backwards.
Where the chart stops helping
36 chords is a reference, not a vocabulary. Two limits are worth knowing about early:
- It has no inversions. Every chord is shown in its most common position. The same chord higher up the neck sounds different and is often easier to reach from where your hand already is.
- It has no voice leading. Knowing the shapes is not the same as knowing which shape to reach for next. That comes from playing songs, which is why every chord page on this site ends with the real songs that use it.
The full reference
For the complete library — all 12 roots, major, minor, seventh, suspended, sixth, diminished, augmented and power chords — browse the chord dictionary. The chords you will actually play have their own page with step-by-step fingerings, every position up the neck and the songs that use them; the rarer shapes are grouped into family pages where all twelve roots can be compared side by side.