a guitar chord

LEARN 5 Easy Ways To Play An A Guitar Chord With Variations

One of the first guitar chords that you are probably going to learn how to play is the guitar A chord.  However, with guitar and something called the CAGED system (will be posting more on that on this site in the future), there are actually a number of different ways to play an A chord.

The first way to play it is called an open chord – it is called this because it contains open strings that you do not fret.  Here is the first one – notice that you only play the top five strings and omit the open E since that note is not part of the A chord.

Not sure how to read these below chords charts?  Take a look at my post on beginner guitar chords for a complete explanation.

What Notes Make Up An A Chord?

The three notes that make up an A Major Guitar Chord are A, C# and E.

Basic open chord:

A Major Guitar Chord Variations

The next A chord variation is played on the fifth fret.  This is also a barre chord

This variation can also be done like this:

You can also move up to the seventh fret and do this:

Higher up on the neck, you can also play:

Practice These Guitar Chords

I’d recommend learning and memorizing each of these guitar chords and incorporating them into your playing.  Basically, wherever there is an A chord in a song you are playing, you can substitute with any of these above.