Guitar skills: Getting to grips with new chords is a sure-fire way to take your songwriting in new directions and, hopefully, to the next level. So our charts are here to help you find your own voice ...

When it comes to guitar chords, it all begins with basic ones that are called either major (use just the letter of the chord, eg E for E major) or minor (reduced to the letter plus m, eg Em for E ...

Once you know how to construct major and minor scales on the piano, you can take the notes within them and start stacking them up together to play chords. While it’s possible to form simple two-note ...

Conventional wisdom dictates that a well-written song will stand up even when reduced to simple chords on acoustic guitar. But at some point, we’ve all heard songs in which complex or unusual chord ...

A lot of the elements that make pop music successful relate to it being catchy and familiar. As a songwriter, there are many ways to engender this feeling in listeners, to do with song structure, ...

A normal C major chord is C-E-G, but you can easily change it to E-G-C, called the 'first inversion', or G-C-E, the 'second inversion' - the bass note has changed, but it's still the same chord, with ...