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Chord Transitions
Being painfully aware that I need to improve speed in forming and transitioning between chords, I’m doing exercises to switch back and forth between 2 chords. This is actually a lot of fun. Once I get my speed up I’ll start playing actual songs, Yay!
Here is my question: do I alter the finger placement in the chord to increase my speed in the transition? For example as I switch between G and Em, it’s easier to use fingers 1 & 2 to form the Em, while I might use 2 & 3 for the Em if I was transitioning to Am.
I guess what I’m questioning is, for the chord to become part of your “muscle memory” is it key to always form it the same way? Or can your brain translate the use of different fingers to form the same pattern on the fretboard
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3 Replies
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If you alter the fingering for a chord it is basically learning a new chord. You will have to spend the time to train the brain for that new fingering. If you learn the chord one way it is often then a little quicker when you change it but not by much.
It does take a lot of time and focused practice to get a chord shape into “muscle memory”.
There is great book on how the brain learns The Laws of Brainjo. Worth a read if you are interested in that sort of thing. It really helped me in my guitar journey.
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Hmmn: interesting and I kind of anticipated this would be the answer since the same chord with different fingering is actually a different shape and your memory has to store both shapes. But, at the same time as we learn songs, we may use a new shape for a chord because of the ways we will be modifying the chord. Our daily challenge this week is an example: very odd way of forming the G chord – I can hardly do it at all (after just recently finding some success playing the “normal” G cleanly).
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That’s a great example, the normal G chord has moved into your subconscious while the new one has not so you have to think about it and struggle with it.
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