Originally Posted by: simpleman9

It has been a month since I started learning with an electric guitar. I still find it a bit difficult changing from A to D and back. I practice regularly, but still I cannot go smoothly between these two (less ftom D to G).

Does that mean that I should consider giving up learning guitar? Is it reasonable that it has been a month and I still cannot do that properly?

I want you to think about this for a minute, to change from an Am to an Open D, you have six different locations for your fingers to be. You have two seperate strum patterns (the A requires you to strum from the 5th string down and the D from the 4th string down). In the simplest terms, that means that you are managing eight things at one time. Eight!

The point here is not to intimidate you but for you to realize that since you're about a month in, you're asking yourself to be ahead of probably where it is reasonable for you to be.

Some good advice in this thread. Any chord change you make requires a little practice and some times a lot. The thing I add is not how fast you do it, but how clean you do it at a speed that allows you to strum cleanly. Even if it seems silly slow, don't worry about it. What's the hurry? All you're doing is getting used to something.

If I handed you a baseball right now, do you think you could throw a 70MPH fastball in the strikezone? (unless you're actually a pticher..in which case....hehe).

Point being is that it takes time to get there. You'll hear this a lot in your journey playing guitar. As a matter of fact; I'd suggest that the most important skill for a guitar player is patience. You will always need it no matter how good you get!

Lately I've been on a jag of just learning various tunes just for fun but also because these aren't exactly the meat-n-potatos A-G-D-E open chord songs (I've been playing for decades so, ya know....). The latest installment is Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon. The opening/verse riff is pretty funky. Mostly because the actual melody riff is played by Buckingham at the same time his thumb is playing a counterpoint base riff in what seems to be a different time signature. Patience? Yes! Heck, even the melody riff is not exactly in a normal time.

So, you know...give yourself some time.