No songwriter or musician can exist without chords. If he was a general and in war his chords would be his men. And the more chords one has in their arsenal the more songs they can play and write. Luckily there are thousands of chords already in existence, and countless ways to put them together based on theory; enough to fill libraries.

Which really brings me to the first tip:

1. If you really want to be a great guitar player take a stroll down to the nearest library and go and find some books on chords. The Internet is good as well, but in my experience it pales in comparison to the gems you can find down at your local library.

2. Pick a chord family and stick with it. Learn some patterns like I-VI- that can easily be transposed to other keys, that involve all chords in that key.

3. Okay this may sound funny, but don't be intimidated by chords with strange or foreign names; the naming has nothing to do with how complex a chord, in fact sometimes the chord with the strangest name is often the easiest to play.

4. Buy a chord book or visit a website to learn chords. Always have a reference to go back to, guitar chord formation charts come in handy when you have the chords for a song, but no tab of the chords.

5. My personal favorite is to just plain experimenting, for example if you love the C Chord (as many people do) try moving your fingers around and adding different notes to it but keeping most of the notes the same. You might be pleasantly surprised with this one. Try this with any chord shape you know.

6. Invent your own chords. There are literally thousands of different chords that can be played on a guitar, but again, why not try and experiment and see if you can come up with something new?

7. Don't be afraid to mix chords up. One of my favorite things to do is substitute a minor for a major. And though not theoretically correct, it sounds awesome. Don't be afraid to just ignore the rules of theory and try different things.

8. Learn Movable shapes, and barre chords that can be played in any position. Memorize these as they will come in handy when you least expect it. Barre chords are especially hand to learn, because for every one barre chord you learn, you can play it in 12 different keys, and going from a major to a seventh or a sixth is the same fingering for every key (just in a different key).

9. Learn the circle of fifths, if you haven't already learned the circle of fifths, google it or look it up in a guitar book, it comes in handy for learning which chords go well together.

10. Always learn new songs and find ones that are challenging with guitar chords you've never played before. Not only will you have a song to add to your repertoire but you will have learned new chords and new chord progressions that can be reused over and over again.

Playing the guitar is a never ending lesson, and the more guitar chords your learn the greater and more enjoyable this lesson becomes.