Article Tags: lesson practice chord chords

During a lesson the other day, a beginner asked about how to learn to chord changes. Meaning, in a song that has two bars of chords like D D C C G G G G, how can you get the change from D C to G smoother? Well, here's a two part answer.

The first, obvious, part is to practice slowly. A metronome is good to use. Find a slow tempo to start with, and I mean really slow, like 40 bpm. Increase the tempo by 2-3 bpm when you can change chords smoothly. 'Smoothly' means letting the chords ring with a consistent, even strum.

The second part gets more into muscle memory. The point of learning chords when first starting the guitar--well at least the way I teach guitar--is to get a foundation for the instrument and for music. To make this process less frustrating, you have to realize the part of being a musucian is muscle memory. You have to train your fingers, hand, wrist, arm, etc. what something feels like. So, here's an exercise, no need to strum with this--remember to focus on how your hand and fingers feel during this exercise.

Finger a D chord and hold it. Lift your hand away from the fretboard, wiggle fingers, and refinger the D chord and hold. Now switch to the C and hold. Lift and wiggle and go back to D. After this is working, test your muscle memory. Finger D then, without wiggling fingers, hold the shape and lift your hand away from the fretboard and keep your fingers frozen in a D chord position. Bring your hand back to the fretboard and see close your fingers are to the needed D chord fingering. Try this with the C. Now, we're not overloooking G, once you the D to C switch under control, go C to G, then G to D. I tried this in a lesson and it helped the students (age 10 and 14) get teh switch so then could play along with me, albeit slowly.

Added on: 2008 05 22