Exercise: Strumming the D major Chord [Guitar Guide]

Position each finger with care, according to the chord diagram (right). Make sure that each fingertip is placed directly behind the fret. Firstly, pluck across the strings one by one with your pick, checking that each string rings clearly and is not muted or buzzing. Watch the first video example to hear how the chord should sound. Practise strumming the D major Chord in single downward  trokes as indicated below:

Exercise: Strumming the A major Chord [Guitar Guide]

Position each finger with care,according to the chord diagram (right). Make sure that each fingertip is placed as close as possible behind the fret. Firstly, pluck across the strings one by one with your pick, checking that each string rings clearly and is not mutedor buzzing.
Once you are sure that you are holding the A major chord correctly, practise strumming the chord in single downward strokes as indicated below:

Introduction to Strumming [Guitar Guide]

In a strum there are two types of guitar stroke. They are the up stroke and the down stroke.
Throughout this book these strokes will be notated as follows:

When you play a stroke, you strum across the strings just in front of the bridge of the guitar
with the pick in your strumming hand. When strumming a chord, make sure that you play all
the necessary strings in the chord. The stroke direction will depend on which stroke is
indicated; up or down as shown above.

Chord diagram - A major chord [Guitar Guide]

In the chord diagram below you can see that the A major chord uses fingers 1, 2, and 3. Take note of how this chord diagram looks - we will use this style from now on.

The A major chord is constructed of the notes A, C# and E. We will cover notes a little later. For now, we will make chords without knowledge of individual notes.

Intoduction to Chords - Guitar Guide

The first things that we will look at in here are chords. Guitarists use many different chords to make progressions or riffs that can then be used to create songs. If you are not familiar with some of these terms, it’s ok. We will cover everything that I am talking about in good time.
A chord is defined as a combination of three or more notes played together. To examine this, I want to take a look at chord diagrams. Chord diagrams are used to illustrate how a chord is played. They are very easy to use because they look very much like the neck of the guitar. In fact, our chord diagram is a guitar neck.

So, now that you know what a chord diagram looks like and how it matches with