First of a serie of videos about the thought process behind playing standards

First of a serie of videos about the thought process behind playing standards
I get often asked, especially by beginners, which are the most useful guitar chords to learn when approaching the instrument for the first time. I always thought the open chords where a good guess, as they appear on most famous ‘sing along’ pop tunes…but I never really knew exactly which ones.
That’s where the the guys from www.jumbojimbo.com come to our help.
They have done a ranking for the chords that appear on all the tunes and chords they have in their database. Turns out that the top ten chords are (drum roll please…)
1 G
2 D
3 C
4 A
5 F (bar chord)
6 A7
7 Em
8 Am
9 E
10 E7
This is a capture of the original page so you can see exactly the chord shape. Click on the picture to enlarge.
In the original page, you will be able to see the full rankings for more complex chords.
In this lesson I explain how to comp in four strumming with a bass line. Usually this is done quite easily in finger style but I find the strumming to change the feel quite a bit, adding a nice groove to the whole thing.
In this video I show the most common 7th chord shapes, it’s all pretty self explanatory! for the theory you can also checkout these other lessons:
http://www.giannichiarello.com/understanding-how-triads-and-other-chords-are-built
http://www.giannichiarello.com/from-the-major-scale-to-the-harmonized-scale-pt-2-7th-chords
And the shapes I use are here:
hhttp://www.giannichiarello.com/LESSON%20MATERIAL/7th%20chords.jpg