Hi Kingstonontario,

If you feel like it's going to take some time to increase the speed of your chord changes, you can also work on some other things in the meantime -- such as basic scales and finger exercises. Eventually your speed will increase. Learning / developing is sort of a spiral, or like climbing a mountain -- you might not go straight up, sometimes you circle around and will be higher each time.

Don't let yourself feel stuck and that you're not allowed to learn anything else if you can't switch those chords really quickly. Keep working on them, but feel free to try some other things, too. Everything you learn will contribute overall to your playing skill. Everyone has a little bit different of a growth path.

EDIT -- to get rhythm going, just take TWO simplified chords and switch between them on slow strums at a VERY slow tempo. It doesn't matter how slow, as long as it's STEADY. Even if it's one strum every 5 or 10 seconds! :) A metronome can help with that. But don't try to switch between all 5. Just two at a time. Break it down to the most basic movement and just repeat for a long time before ever increasing the speed.

(This is also assuming you can keep a steady rhythm on just one chord and simple strums.)

Then, once you feel you can keep a steady, very slow rhythm with just two simple chords, you can do one of these:

1. Change one of the chords to another chord. But still only do two chords.

2. Keep the chords the same but increase the tempo a little bit while still keeping it steady. If it starts to get unsteady, slow it back down.

3. Change both of the chords.

4. A mixture of all those.

Eventually, add a third chord to the group. This is all just training your fingers and brain to do them automatically, and the best way is to go slow and steady.

Slow and steady.

-Carl.