You don’t have to read music to play guitar, but knowing how to read a chord diagram and translate it to your guitar is a helpful skill. You can then use those chord diagrams to play a variety of songs, many of which use just a few basic chords.
How to translate fingerboard diagrams to a real guitar
You can translate the lines and circles in a guitar fingerboard diagram quite easily once you get the hang of it. The following figure, which shows the relation between a diagram and an actual guitar helps you turn a diagram into a chord.
