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  • Kitman

    Member
    December 12, 2022 at 4:22 pm

    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!