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Reading chord and scale grids is just one of many shortcuts that make playing guitar easier. You may have come across some chord and scale grids while learning to play guitar and thought, “What the heck is that?” “Do I play all of those notes at once?”

In this lesson I’m going to clear the confusion up for you because chord and scale grids are a couple of the most useful and easy tools there are for learning quickly on the guitar.

Let’s start with the chord grid.

Reading Chord Grids

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Reading chord grids is super easy.

The first thing you need to realize is that you’re only looking at a small portion of the neck.

The section being illustrated is indicated by fret numbers running alongside.

Reading a Scale Grid

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Scale grids share a lot of their same traits with chord grids.

However, scale grids are displayed horizontally rather than vertically.

They are also displayed upside down with the thickest string closest to the reader.

This mimics the appearance of the neck when holding the guitar with the thickest string ( low E ) being closest to the eyes.

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