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maggior
Registered User
Joined: 01/27/13
Posts: 1,723
maggior
Registered User
Joined: 01/27/13
Posts: 1,723
06/28/2016 2:27 pm
Chord changes are definitely a challenge. The first thing you need to do is be patient with yourself and know that you will eventually get it down.

There are a variety of things you can do that can help.

- practice changing chords without strumming. Do this slowly. Your fingers need to learn the motions of where they need to go. Sometimes they don't need to go anywhere, or go very far. By practicing this slowly, you can do this purposefully. The beginner lessons here have some excellent tips on this stuff.

- try playing a simple song with the chords you are working on...but play it slowly. Try giving each chord a single strum for each measure. This gives you time to navigate the chord changes with more time and still keep your playing in time. As you get better, speed it up until you are at the appropriate tempo for the song.

If you get to the second point and it's getting frustrating, go back to the first point.

I find the approach of a small amount of time spent every day on something like this is much more beneficial than sitting for hours working on it. Spending hours daily on something like this will only frustrate you and it will be unproductive.

Know this, if you keep at it and be patient with yourself, you WILL get there...

It may be encouraging for you to know that even those of us that have been playing for a good number of years still struggle with this when we encounter a new chord shape. For instance, I learned Taxman recently and there was a chord in there that was new to me that I had to change to VERY quickly. At first I felt like a gimp trying to navigate the change, but used the method I described above and got it down eventually.