The chord vocabulary every beginner needs
Beginner guitar curricula vary, but the chord shortlist doesn’t much. After teaching hundreds of beginners across hundreds of styles, virtually every guitar teacher converges on roughly the same 15–20 open chords as the foundation. This chart codifies them.
The six majors (C, A, G, E, D, F) cover the chord vocabulary of most folk and acoustic singer-songwriter repertoire. The three minors (Am, Em, Dm) add the emotional palette needed for pop and rock. The five dominant 7ths (E7, A7, B7, D7, G7) unlock blues, jazz and bluesy folk. The four sus chords (Dsus2, Dsus4, Asus2, Asus4) cover the most common decorative voicings in modern pop.
Cheat sheet, not exam paper
This is reference material, not a curriculum. Don’t hand the whole sheet to a brand-new student on lesson 1 — that’s overwhelming. Hand it to them after the first lesson with three or four chords circled (the ones you covered today, plus the next one or two coming up). Add a circle each lesson. By month three they’re using the whole sheet.
The “tape it to the wall” rule
There’s a reason this chart is sized as a single A4 page rather than a multi-page reference: it has to live somewhere visible. A reference that lives in a drawer doesn’t get used; a reference that’s taped inside the guitar case lid is the first thing the student sees when they pick up the instrument. Print it, hand it over, tell them where to put it.
When this isn’t enough
These 18 chords get a student through the first 6–12 months of guitar. Beyond that, the next block is barre chords (which unlock all twelve keys), then power chords for rock, then the world of jazz voicings, drop-2 chords, and so on. A “beyond open chords” sheet is on the roadmap.