I can’t think of any examples I’ve come across of chord diagrams shown that way. I always see them straight up and down - nut at the top if it’s first position.

This way of portraying a chord seems to be relatively new. I think it became more common due to YouTube and online sites. It reminds me of a cross between tab and traditional chord symbols.

It is absolutely NOT something you will see in decades worth of songbooks.

Toward the end of the 1600s, before the instrument even looked like it does today, Gaspar Sanz and others wrote guitar music in upside-down tablature (top lines represent bass strings). I wrote out three pieces from Sanz’s instruction manual about 20 years ago and have recently rewritten them using MuseScore. You can see them here, along with scans of the original upside-down tablature from 1675.

Not at all. You just have to imagine the chord diagram laid flat on the guitar fretboard. It's like a piece of the fretboard, drawn as a diagram or a map.

However, I wouldn't say you are wrong to see it the way you do. As a guitar teacher, I've met a substantial minority of beginners who see it the same way: essentially as if you are looking through the neck from the back, so you "see" the 1st string as the bottom string and the bass string on top. And you feel it that way too of course.
It's also the same as you would see it if you were to look in a mirror, or if a left-handed player was sitting facing you.

IOW, there are many ways you can explain the logic of how you see chords and how you think the diagrams (and tab) should be. But you need to understand the logic of the convention - it happens to be a majority view, but it's the fact it's conventional that matters.

And there is a logic, as I say. It's like a piece of the fretboard (or a photo of the fretboard) has been converted into a diagram - directly, the same as a street map. Because the fretboard - unlike a set of streets! - is normally vertical and facing away from you, you have to flip it in order to see it. Put it on your lap so the fretboard is facing up, and it then looks the same as the chord diagram, on a sheet of paper or in a book on a table in front of you. You're then seeing a "map of the territory" that you're looking down on.

The argument about tab is perhaps a little different, because that's a notation convention, not a direct mapping of the 2D fretboard. It has pitch upwards (like the chord or scale diagram), but the other dimension is time, not distance. In that sense, it relates to standard staff notation, where higher pitches are upwards, and time is teft to right.

Of course, the whole idea that "high" pitches are literally "above" low pitches physically or visually, is another convention. On piano and guitar alike (for a right-hander), "higher" pitches are towards the right, not physically above at all. In fact, the way we normally hold the guitar, headstock up, the "higher" frets are physically lower than the "low" frets.

Yes , All my old guitar songbooks the chord diagrams are oriented vertically
But couple more thoughts #1 there really does not seem being one "Standard Practice" for chord diagrams.
And perhaps it may also be some kind of off shoot, from most scale diagrams being oriented horizontally ? and also perhaps from attempting to diagram guitar chords going up the neck

like this
https://i.imgur.com/4wK4Qm9.png
https://i.imgur.com/lmttGPj.png

This is my first post in this forum and I really didn't mean to stir things up. Sometimes I have a natural sense of query that questions conventional wisdom. This is just one of those things that made me ask "why do they call it the sixth string when it's the first string I strike when strumming a chord?"

Then when I looked at a graph of a chord and it kind of make sense to me. But then I wondered why the diagram is oriented in such a way that it appears upside down?

This is a great place and I've been reading other posts for awhile and decided to ask and you gave an excellent explanation, as have others. So thank you all for taking the time to go into detail.

So now when I see chords oriented this way in some diagrams, I'll look at them from the point of view as you said "like a piece of the fretboard, drawn as a diagram or a map"

Makes more sense to me now and I get it. Still seems a little strange to call the top string on a guitar, the string I strike first, the bottom or sixth string. But I reckon there's more important things in life to be concerned with.

Great forum and great answers, thanks guys!

I, too, have seen most chord diagrams in books or on songsheets oriented vertically. But I've seen a lot of them horizontally as you've shown, and I find them easier to follow than the vertical ones because they relate more, in my mind, to what I need to do on the fretboard to make the chord. I like the idea that they show exactly how to form the chord, where, for me, the vertical ones always seemed harder to read.

As for the first string/sixth string confusion, it does seem counter-intuitive, but if you think of the bass (the "top" string) as the "bottom" in the pitch spectrum, it makes more sense. The bass instrument in a band often is said to provide the "bottom" in the band's sound, so the guitar's bass strings can be referred to as the bottom string, even though it is located on top. Confusing, until you get used to it. If you look at tablature, the bottom line is the bass string, and they go up from there to the top - which is the high string that is located on the bottom as you hold the guitar. Very confusing at first, but it makes a kind of sense once you get used to how it works.

Jack

I don't know but the 1st string being the highest pitch convention makes more sense when you look at bowed string instruments where the first string is the one closest to the bowing hand. It does make sense to me as being the highest pitch but I'm well used to it and when "mr midi' numbered the notes on a keyboard he started at the bottom which just goes to show what I know...

Text format is my preference:

C x32010

When above the 9th fret add spaces:

C 8 10 10 9 8 8

Or if you are a nerd drop the spaces and use hexadecimal:

C 8AA988

I don't know if it's applicable in the case of the OP, but for what it's worth: I've had a couple of students over the years that made better progress while we both sat side by side in front of a mirror.

This way they saw what I was doing from the same perspective.

Sitting across from me somehow confused them. I am certain that a form of dyslexia was at work in these cases.

Regards,
Howard Emerson

No,you dont have to tilt it back 180 degs.If you just tip it a bit and look at the fingerboard you are viewing it as pictured.

That makes sense ,,Imagine the confusion for me when I played in a Duo where the guy I played with (who was a lefty ) had learned to play 25 years before, by sneaking in to his older sisters room when she was gone. He would grab her right handed guitar and simply flip it over and thus learned the chord forms and fingering upside down .