Guitar Chords for Classic Country Songs

One of my favorite things about classic country music is that it can be so good and so simple at the same time. In order to play most country songs, you only need to be able to play a few chords. Lots of people learn to play songs by tablature (tabs), but my approach is to learn a few chords, and then learn how long to play each chord in the song. This also avoids legal troubles with tabbing out songs or writing someone else’s music or lyrics.

So I just give you the chords, the order, and how long to play them. Most of the time these patterns can be applied to several songs. Additionally, I’ll let you know what chords “go together” so it will be easier to learn songs on your own.

If you already know the chords you are ahead of the game. If you don’t, you can use the simple chord diagrams.

Here’s how it goes. This diagram of a hand has numbers on each of the fingers. The diagrams of the chords show which fingers go on which string and on which fret. An “o” over a string means you play it open, and “x” means you don’t strum that string at all. Pretty easy, huh?

This little diagram is all you really need. Each of the songs will have the chords that go with it diagrammed right there with the songs.

Here’s a list of songs on this site with the chords to them.