Can you move your fretting hand quickly when you want to change guitar chords? If you really want to learn how to play guitar effectively and even start composing, you need to be able to change chords quickly and accurately.
This all comes back to the key basics when you start learning to play any type of instrument: developing brain-muscle coordination, which is usually referred to as muscle memory. People who are skilled in basketball hone their shooting skills by focusing on their hand eye coordination and muscle memory which allows them to aim the ball squarely into the hoop without much time. Practice, experience and skill teach the muscles of the arms, wrists, and hands the proper movements and strength that must be used to make a basket. Your whole body, from your brain to your muscles, will develop a strict series of movements that help you perform these functions.
The same thing is true when learning how to play the guitar. Your eyes must be coordinated with your fingers, wrists and arms, in order to think about what chord you’re wanting to play and to do it without always looking at the guitar when changing. All of this becomes the mechanism that is working when the person playing the guitar begins changing chords.
When you are changing chords, start by memorizing all the chords you’ll be using with the music, and then practice visualizing where each of your fingers on your fretting hand are when you play each chord. Barre chords need to focus on the index finger, as that will create the “bar” that the rest of the fingers work from.
That index finger should be the first one that is placed on the fret, so that the rest of the fingers can follow suit and create the rest of the chord. Even when you’re playing a simple or broken chord, the importance of the index finger continues to be part of playing that chord.
It is the index finger and the thumb that create the anchor for your and along the guitar neck as your other fingers press the other strings needed to make the chord. It’s the index finger that most often used to play on the highest string or the lowest fret (by string 1 or pitch), as there it can easily locate the right note, and the rest of the fingers will follow and complete the chord.
Make sure you’re keeping up with the song’s tempo, while figuring out what chord is coming next and anticipating it appropriately, so that you’re ready. If you’re a beginner, try practicing the whole song very slowly from start to finish, paying attention to carefully do your chord changes on time and in tempo. As you gain the skill to be able to complete the entire song without chord errors or tempo errors, you will be ready to begin to increase the speed at which you play the song, until you reach the proper tempo.
The most difficult chord changes that need to be made are changes from simple chords to barre chords, changes from barre chords to simple chords, and changes in chords that require you to move your fingers quite a distance from the last chord. You will want to isolate these changes and practice them separately. If you still have trouble at the slower tempo, just skip the last beat of the last chord and employ the extra time to put your fret hand in the correct position for the next fret.
You need to continue practicing your chord changes until you can play the difficult sections the music without errors. Then return to playing the complete song, as we mentioned above. You can switch between frantic strumming and plucking individual strings to achieve certain moods and effects with the music; you can even speed up and slow down your strumming to emphasize certain song sections or lead up to the chorus.
It is important to be able to mimic the way the original artist played the song on the guitar, before you tweak it to your style of playing. You’ll find this will be great help in developing your hands for much harder chords and techniques using your fingers.
If you keep this up, you can hone your skills at the guitar to the point where you can handle new songs with ease and technique.
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