Chords are the most important thing to concentrate on. Names of notes, scales, modes, key signatures — all of that stuff is important to know — but put it on the back burner for now. Chords underlie every piece of music you will ever encounter, chords are what you'll be following when you join a band or learn a song, chords determine what notes your melody lines, riffs and licks will need to consist of, so I highly recommend that you learn as much about chords as you can and that you always make it your priority. There is a lot to learn about music, but you will find that chords encapsulate a good portion of it all, so by knowing chords, you'll also be learning a lot of the other stuff. Lets first look at what are known as the open chords which are those that use some of the open strings of the guitar. They are the most basic of guitar chords, so learn them well.

There are two main flavors of chords in music: major and minor. We'll look at the majors first as they are the 'standard' against which all other chords are measured. On a guitar, there are 5 open major chords. It's the way the guitar is tuned and the fact that it has six strings that determines the 'shapes' of these five chords, nothing else. Alphabetically, they are A, C, D, E, and G (there's no need to add the word 'Major' after these letters; when nothing is written, they are understood to be major). There are no open B and F open chords. You'll be finding out more about these five chords later on, and you'll find them written in a different order, one that forms a word: CAGED. Let's stick to referring to them in that order from now on. 'Caged' just happens to be the word formed by these five letters but there's no hidden meaning.