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Beginner
I’m a beginner. I’m struggling with cord changing speed. I’m almost finished with the 30 day play portion. I find myself going back time and again to review the different sections, but it’s becoming very frustrating. Help!
Stephen
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5 Replies
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Don’t be disheartened. Transitioning chord shapes takes time. My suggestion is to concentrate on four basic open chords such as D, A, C and G. Find songs with them that you like and work on them even if your tempo is really slow. You will start teaching your fretting fingers to have muscle memory as you go from one shape to the next. It took me about a year to gain speed and not think about finger placement. Practice, practice, practice – even for just ten minutes.
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@SteveDyer sounds like you are making some good progress!! The 30 Days to Play has some great content for chord transitions- I agree that keep practicing, slow and steady is the key.
When practicing transition from one chord to another, try to look for common strings fretted, and/or common fingers used on both chords. Anchor notes/anchor fingers can help by realizing you have a note/finger in common and you can keep that in place as the other fingers switch to the new chord. Ex: the 5th string 3rd fret (ring finger) C-note of the open C-chord, keep that ring finger right there, because it’s already where it needs to be for the F-chord. That’s your anchor.
Another good trick to practice is to take any chord on its own. Start with a 2 finger chord like Eminor. Fret the chord, and strum. Adjust your fretting fingers until you get a clean chord. Then between each strum, lighten up your fretting fingers just a bit, without losing contact with the strings. Then resume the fretting pressure and strum again. Keep lightening up the pressure more and more until you actually lift your fretting fingers just slightly off the strings, then re-establish contact. Gradually lift your fingers higher and higher between strumming the chord. This helps teach chord shape muscle memory to your fretting hand.
There’s more chord shape and transition drills in the Skill Courses (My Routine section) here at TAC:
https://tonypolecastro.com/courses/your-next-six-chords/#learndash-course-content
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This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Carol-3M-Stillhand.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by
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Hang in there! I remember very well how frustrated I’d get in the beginning, feared that I’d never develop any speed. But eventually your fingers develop that muscle memory and chord changing becomes almost automatic (though that isn’t happening yet for me with barre chords, alas!)
As the others suggested, learn a few favourite 3 or 4 chord songs – I find that much more motivating than doing repetitive drills. Don’t know your musical tastes, but if you like country take a look at “Wagon Wheel”. It has a catchy rhythm, and uses the same chord progression for all the verses and the chorus (G -D -Em – C). You’ll find lots of tutorials on YouTube.
Best of all keep coming back to Tony’s daily challenges – even if you find some of them hard now, believe me, sticking with that regular habit pays off big time! And it’s great that you came to the forums, there are many veteran TAC members who are eager and willing to offer advice and encouragement.
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Hi @SteveDyer , great advice from everyone on this thread.
A couple other ideas. First, in one of the videos (I think it may have been a daily challenge) Tony presented a chord exercise to build muscle for chord shapes. You start with your fretting hand on your lap. Then Tony did a count down from 5, playing the chord on 1 by strumming the chord. (ie 5, 4, 3, 2, play the chord). You use time in the 5 to 2 countdown to position your fretting hand to correctly play the chord. Repeating this exercise helps you to build the muscle memory. Once you get a 5 count under your fingers, do a 4 count, then 3, then 2. You can use this exercise on chord.
The second is a variation of this exercise using a metronome in 4/4 time. Set the metronome to a nice slow beat (say 40 BPMs or something you consider nice and slow. Use Beats 1 to 3 to position your fingers on the chord and on beat 4 strum the chord. Then move to the next chord with the same process. This will help with transitions between chords. Once you have achieved nice clean quality chord sounds, bump your metronome to increase the BPMs by 5 beats and repeat.
Keep at it and be patient with yourself. Learning new things can be frustrating at times. Don’t feel discouraged. Find the one small win from the day and celebrate that. It will help you keep at it the next day. Above all have fun!
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Thank you to everyone who provided me with great advice and suggestions. I’ll definitely put them into practice as I continue to work on learning to play the guitar.
Steve
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