The Chords That Capture your Imagination

Fingerstyle Lesson inspired by Beethoven.

Today, I played around with my guitar, and I came up with these chord progressions in A minor.

Honestly, as soon as I played the second chord, I knew exactly how it would sound. There are very few music pieces that sound like this one, and even if I was improvising, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

The piece I am referring to is the Moonlight Sonata was written by one of the greatest composers of all time, Beethoven and today; we will be working on a similar idea to help your creativity, imagination, and guitar skills.

Really important, I am not going to teach you the exact chord progression from the Sonata. Instead, we will use this piece to create a beautiful and melodic exercise.

We will be focusing on the thumb movement and alternate fingering to create this effective plucking pattern that sounds amazing.

I really love this chord progression, so I hope you enjoy the lesson and get inspired.

Let’s get started with this inspirational fingerstyle lesson.

The Video

The Chords

In this fingerstyle lesson, we will be working on a straightforward chord progression in A minor. The chords are pretty basic, and it shouldn’t be difficult for you to memorize them. However, we have to play a full F major with a bar chord, which will probably challenge your finger’s strength.

The chord progression goes as follows: Am – C/G – F – Dm  – C – E7 – Am

The first step would be to learn the chords perfectly. Pluck each chord one time and let it ring out before you move on to the next one.

Practicing the chords first is really important because you don’t want the left hand to slow you down when practicing the fingerstyle pattern.

The Plucking Thumb

Once you feel that the chords sound good, you can move on to this fingerstyle lesson’s next step.

It is time to make these chords beautiful so that they can capture your imagination.

The chords will be played with the thumb only, and each chord will be six notes long.

Check the example below. This is the full chord progression played with the thumb. Once you feel comfortable playing this guitar part, you can move on to the next step, which will be more challenging yet beautiful to play.

Let’s add the Accompaniment.

To get the chords to sound beautiful, there is one more step that is necessary and really beneficial for your plucking technique.

The accompaniment is elementary, and it will be played entirely on the first string.

You don’t need to change the chord or learn new ones; just alternate the thumb with the middle and index finger, as shown in the example below.

Final Thoughts

I love to be inspired by classical music.

One of the most important things about music is that we can get inspired by a song and then use it to create our own music. These are the ultimate skills you must learn!

First, learn, then Create.

Good luck, guys.