Barre Chore and Strumming Exercises

I am new to Guitar Talk on GuitarTricks forum. I'm 46 years old, and I stared playing a classical guitar about 1 year. I eventually want to buy an acoustic guitar; by I was told to learn on a classical guitar first. It helps to develop good habits. I do have an older Fender stat electric guitar, but I don't do any practicing on it yet. But I do play it once in a while.
The styles I like are classical rock, blues. I actually like a lot of the newer rock that come out from the 60’s to present. I don’t limit my tastes in music rock and blues; I like all types of music.

Up to now I'm able to form and switch the basic open chords fairly well. OK, I'm still working on better fluid switches but I am getting better.

Anyway, my biggest challenges at this point are:
1) Barre chords (Root 5, and root 6). I'm able to form the chords fine, but I'm not able to switch chords very quickly, or accurately. Is the any good barre chord strengthening exercises that can help me improve?

2) Strumming patterns. Is there anything available that shows you how to practice various strum patterns?

Any input will be well appreciated.

Stabag

Hey dude check out this tutorial:

http://www.guitartricks.com/lesson.php?input=8283&s_id=76

Their are a bunch of other lessons on my page that may also be useful

Happy playing !

I am not sure if this will help you or not but I too had a hard time getting a good sound out of a barre chord. I found that rolling my finger on it's side as close to the fret as possible will give me the best sound. The side of my finger is harder and I can put more even pressure on that way and reduces that buzzy sound.

After a while you will be able to get your finger flat straight across the neck with no buzzing. It is painful at first but it just takes practice.

When learning how to strum its better to keep it simple first. Just strum up down up down and count each strum as, "1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 ect..."

When inbetween strums say or think the word "and" so when your counting it it will sound like this: "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and." "1" being the first down strum. "And" being the first up beat (with no strum.) "2" being the first up strum followed by another "and" being the second up beat (with no strum,) and so on. [U]Remember that you strum on the numbers only,[/U] and you don't strum on the up beats (some songs will strum on the up beats but that is a little bit more advanced then this.)

Keep your intervals in time equal. What I mean by this... ...Well let me try to illustrate it with an example. Think of seconds on a clock. The first second would be equal to "1." The second second would be equal to "2." The 3rd second would be equal to "3," and so on. 1.5 seconds would be equal to an up beat. 2.5 seconds would be equal to an up beat. 3.5 seconds would be equal to an up beat, and so on. If you were to strum along with a second hand on a clock you would eventually strum your guitar 60 times in one minute. In music we call this a tempo. So 60 strums (or beats) in a minute is a tempo of 60. If you were to strum 2 times for every second on a clock then you would strum your guitar 120 times in one minute. What tempo would we call this? The tempo is called 120 because its 120 beats (or strums) per a minute.

This can seem redundant, but by having this basic knowledge and practicing it you will be able to master any stumming pattern eventually without effort.