How to change chords quickly
“When you play a song, you won’t be strumming the same chord over and over. You’ll be changing chords while you play. Changing chords quickly is one of the first big steps in learning to play the guitar. Once you know a few chords, and are able to switch between them quickly, you are well on your way. Did you know that if you know the chords A Major, D major and E major, you can play hundreds of songs based on _only_ these chords? It’s true.” guitarseek.com
Every novice guitarist has this problem. You buy a guitar, practice every day, try your best to follow advice you find on forums but stills there’s the dead silence as you change chords.
This post on guitarseminars.com says it all:
“ive been learning the acoustic guitar for just over a month now using online lessons, and ive learnt 6 chords but im finding it real hard to change from one chord to another when im trying to learn a song.
I wouldnt of dreamt of trying to learn a song at this stage if the lessons hadn’t of told me to try, but to be quite frank im trying and its sounding like shit.
Should i be worried that i cant play even a little bit of these songs without the 2 second pauses for changing chords?”
There are several interesting and useful answers on the forum but here’s my favorite:
“Learning to play is not just a question of getting enough dexterity and strength in your fingers. It is a brain thing too: You will support your progress when vizualizing your playing: The brain has to memorize the movement of your hands and fingers. The more the fingerings sink into your brain and body the easier you will make the chord changes. And, of course, all the guys who previously posted, are right: Practise and be patient. You will make progress in big steps sometimes: You will have experiences like: “Wow, I can play it today though it did not work yesterday!”. So it is not sort of linear progress. For a good amount of time you may have a feeling of “I’m standing still” and then suddely make a big step forward. This will push your motivation and give you a real satisfying feel. Keep on and you will do it!”
This YouTube video spells out how to approach changing between simple chord shapes -
And here’s an exercise from cyberfret.com showing the advantages of practising moving the left hand fingers together instead of singly.
And another approach . . . “When my teacher first started teacing me chords and playing in between them, he would make me do it with simple time phrases. Let me give you an example: Find one chord that you are having trouble with and put your fingers down to form the chord, play it and the count in a simple 4/4 manner. Then when you feel as if you’re ready, play 2 chords. Let me show you by example with the diagram below: Let’s say you are having trouble with C
C C
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
Then when you feel you can do two chords:
C D C D
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
Follow this pattern with different chords that you are having trouble with and you will progress very quickly.”
guitarplayerzen
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