two shapes, twelve chords each
Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.
Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.
Standard tuning E A D G B E. Above a fret is the chord an E shape gives, below it the chord an A shape gives; accented is the nearer of the two.
Every chord sits on the neck twice: once with its root on the sixth string, once with its root on the fifth. The two places are always exactly 5 frets apart — the same 5 semitones that separate the strings themselves.
So one of the two is bound to be low. Go through all twelve chords and the nearer of the pair never climbs past fret 7, and on average lands on fret 3.6.
Which means two shapes and the first seven frets already cover every major and minor chord there is. The rest of the neck is there for how it sounds, not for reaching a chord.
Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 8 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.
12 keys · key signatures · relative minors
one coil or two · six builds · where it sits along the string, and how high above it
15 chords every beginner starts with · standard tuning E A D G B e
standard tuning E A D G B e · first twelve frets