Originally Posted by: markpetten
Hey all,
need some advice/pep talk. The title says it all. I've stalled. I'm can nail down the 5 chords in the power pack from GF1. Nice tones with no plunky notes. Yay me! But that's it. I've been working on switching between chords, mixing them up, trying to keep things interesting but no dice. I just can't switch in rhythm. I use a metronome, simple 4/4 time, and no matter the speed I just can't seem to do it. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

While I can't say I super-struggled with this when I started (maybe all my years of air guitar in the 70's meant something!), what will always remain true is learning chord changes no matter how good you get. Not that you will have a lifelong struggle with them but when you learn a new, unfamiliar pattern, even when you've been playing forever like I have, it takes time to get them down. Even when their your own riffs. This literally happened to me yesterday on a melody I was working out. I knew what I wanted to but had to spend a little time physically becoming comfortable with it....it just happens.

Point being, don't dog on yourself too much. It's the nature of the beast and you come to enjoy the challenge. Right now, you're bumping in to that brick wall. No worry, there's a secret passge to get through it but it's done through practice. Not a magic bullet but it is what you need to do.

My suggestion is to NOT speed up. Just don't. I know you said that you can't do it at any speed. So do a couple of things, first is just strum a chord for a while. Say like an open D. Then do a chord change to an open G and strum that for a while. Then switch back to the open D.

Key here is to NOT furiously switch chord to chord. Just get a couple down and expand from there. It's about building from a base. Also, many songs don't have rapid fire chord changes so strumming a while one chord is a natural thing.

Get one change down. Then expand to an open AMaj or something. Just make sure you get one thing down first, then move upward and onward.

We all have different starting points and have to accept that this is the case. It's not that you have to overcome something but how you approach overcoming.