The Lazy Guitarists Way To Change Chords Properly
How quickly can you change from one chord to another?
Like most intricate human activity, the key to learning the guitar, is to develop brain and muscle coordination, more commonly known as muscle memory needed to play the instrument.
Imagine a basketball player for example. The key to a good shooting performance is the proper hand-to-eye coordination in order to bring the ball up, prepare, aim, and successfully throw it in the hoop. The different muscles of the arms, wrist and hands will learn the right movements and strength needed to score.
It's All About Repetition
Constant practice will condition the eyes, brain and entire body to know the routine of shooting the ball.
It's the same with guitar playing. The muscles involved are in the wrists, arms and fingers, with the ears, eyes and brain working in unison to relate the movements to the music being read and the notes produced by the guitar. This is the mechanism that works when you're learning to changes chords.
The speed at which you change chords is going to be key to you mastering the guitar and playing songs.
But I'm Lazy! How Can I Improve My Chord Changing Technique?
Here are 3 tips to dramatically improve the speed at which you change chords.
- Visualise. Before playing, close your eyes for a second and visualise 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.
- Play along with a song. Crank up your iTunes and put your favourite song on. Play along with the chord changes, even if you're just starting and can't keep up. Just make sure you attempt the changes as well as you can. After 3 run throughs of the same song you will notice that you have drastically improved your changing speed. You can also use a metronome for this technique by changing on chord on each "tock" of the metronome (tick, tock).
Do this for every song, and before you know it, you'll be playing a new song like a seasoned guitarist in no time at all.
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