Originally Posted by: Vegas Wierdo- Uhhhhhhh... how many chords does the average guitarist know? Would a pro know all of the "several thousand" in this big book of mine? How many chords does Jimmy Page know? John Scofield? I've asked many people in the past and nobody's ever given me a straight answer.[/QUOTE]

I like to think that most of the advanced guitarist know how to construct chords. So if they know the basic chord, they just sharpen, flatten, add or subtract notes to create the chords they are looking for.

Originally Posted by: Vegas Wierdo
- My fingers are physically incapable of doing 66% of the chords in this book. What kind of mutant alien can even do half of these? I'm going through the book... and if I'm able to do a chord easily enough, I write an X with a circle around it next to the chord. If I might be able to do it well enough after months of finger-contortion isometrics or whatever... I draw a little spiral. I leave the ones I just can't do blank. [/QUOTE]

Some chords requires heavy stretching and strength that only comes with time. Give yourself a chance and practice them once in a while when you are warmed up so your hand isn't stiff. There's no fast way of doing it, you have to let your hands adapt to new positions.


[QUOTE=Vegas Wierdo]
- I'm also figuring I should invest in a good capo because there's hundreds of chords that involve barring all six strings on the first fret, and more than a few where the second or third are barred.

You wouldn't want to use a capo just to be able to play a certain chord because once you use a capo you have to use it for the whole song :) Unless you're like super fast to put it on and take it off lol Sometimes you just want that one barre chord in your progression, a capo wouldn't help.

[QUOTE=Vegas Wierdo]
- The vast majority of the chords in this book involve between 4 and 6 strings. What happened to all the two and three string chords? I thought that 2-3 strings was the bread-and-butter of basic rhythm guitar.

If you look at the notes used in chords using 4-6 strings, you'll notice that a lot of them have repeating notes in different octaves. That is so the chord sound bigger or "fuller".