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Learning How To Play The Guitar – How Your Body Changes

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When we learn how to play guitar our bodies and minds undergo certain changes. After some trial and error plus some advice from a teacher, we know the process of learning a new song, scale or chord. We get to know ourselves so we can make use of our joy in making music. We can make use of the fact that there are certain times of day when our emotions are more willing to accept standing by and watching our bodies spend fifteen minutes practicing scales.

The more we get to know the way our bodies, minds and feelings work, the more efficient we are at learning new skills. But there are some areas of learning that we need help with. One of these areas is muscle memory. The idea that the body learns movements from repetition is commonly used in many areas of life. But the fact that the more relaxed our muscles are and the more attentive we are when we practice routine movements does not readily jump out at us. The concept of muscle memory is available to us through books and websites.

The basic idea goes like this: you learn a posture or series of movements such as a chord fingering; you then put your fingers in the chord position and take them away and put them back again, returning to the chord position many times until your fingers simply take their places whenever they are needed to. Of course, the way we practice chord shapes is to learn a few chord shapes at first and practice moving from one to the other.

The thing about muscle memory is that our muscles record things that our minds don’t notice. If we are tense in the jaw when we play a barre chord, then that tension will appear as part of taking the chord. If we hold our breath when we play a scale, or grunt every time we make a mistake, those things gradually become habits and it usually takes someone else to draw our attention to it. So a part of learning the movements necessary to play the guitar is attention to how precise and relaxed we are when we learn new chord shapes and scales.

Here are some tips on how to learn chord changes from greenguitarguy.com

“Visualize. Before playing, close your eyes for a second and visualize the chords you’re going to be playing. See where your fingers are going to go and see yourself moving from chord to chord gracefully and economically. Do this for a minute before practicing the song.

Find a ‘hinge’ finger. A hinge finger is a finger which stays on the same note as you change from one chord to the next. The secret is to keep this finger pressed down as you move the other fingers. For example, moving from C to Am to D7, a fairly common progression, you would keep your first finger on the second string , first fret throughout the movement. Because this note, a C, is common to all 3 chords you don’t have to move it. So don’t bother!

Find a ’sliding’ finger. A sliding finger is finger which stays on the same string during the chord change. For example, switching from E to D involves sliding the first finger up the G string from fret 1 to fret 2. So there’s no need to lift the finger off the string. This is great news for us lazy guitarists! Sliding fingers are most useful when moving from a high to a low fretting position or vice versa.”

Here is an article on How To Practice by Rod Hampton, a guitar teacher from Seattle.

The video shows a very simple exercise for training your fingers to play designated frets:


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