Beginner Country Chord Progression
By Gary Heimbauer for Guitar Tricks and 30 Day Singer
To get started with playing country songs on guitar you only need three basic guitar chords. The most common simple country chord progressions have what we call the I, IV and V chords. In any key, these are our three major chords. Since the key of G is the most easy and common guitar key, let’s start there! In the key of G, the I chord, or first chord in the key is the G chord; the IV chord is the C chord, and the V chord is the D chord.
Here are what those three chords look like. You can always use a guitar chord chart if needed:
Let’s put these three chords together to create the following chord progression:
G – C – D – G
I IV V I
We’ll play G for 4 beats, then C for four beats, then D for four beats, and then back to G for four beats, before starting over. Just strum the chord once on every beat. These chords make up tons of other easy guitar songs.
As you can hear, there’s nothing country about it yet…
One way to give it a country “feel” is to alternate between the bass note of the chord, or the lowest, note, played alone on beats 1 and 3 of each measure, and then strumming the rest of the chord on beats 2 and 4. Go ahead and try that!
Once you feel comfortable with that, let’s take it one step further: on beat 1, play the lowest note, then strum the higher strings on beat 2, and then on beat 3 hit the second lowest note of the chord, and then on beat four strum the higher strings. This will give you a bit of a bassline!
The last step here is to hammer on the second lowest note of the chord on beat 3, from the open string. So on beat three you’ll play the open string and then quickly hammer on to the second lowest note of each chord on the “and” of beat 3!
This style of alternating between bass notes and strums, and adding in hammer ons from the open strings is very popular in country music styles!
Remember to start very slow while focusing on good tone, timing, and technique before trying to speed it up. This is a great place to start for anyone learning how to play guitar. It will have a very different feel depending on whether you play it very slow or very fast, it will have a very different feel.
