Begginer struggles

Hi im having hard time with switching chords and get better with that.

im in the first module and trying to change chords on the key of G but it seems that i just can't it and do it fast enough ... any tips?

Hi

You will hear this a lot, but there is truth to it: it takes time and practice. It may help to slow down the transition between chords, be deliberate with finger placement and slowly increase your transition speed.

What William said.

On a more practical level,watch a movie and just sit and switch chords on the fretboard, without even playing, while you watch a movie. Just switch chords over and over again. Develop that muscle memory.

Muscle memory... In my opinion, is the hidden force that makes playing an instrument possible. If you have to use your brain to change chords it is because you have not yet attained the Muscle Memory to do so. It lies beneath the surface of all the stuff you do with your brain when you play an insturment and as such is easy to over looked. Then there is a sudden "break through" and you can play the part that was impossible before. That is usually a result of developing Muscle Memory.

You can't reason with Muscle Memory, you can't force it, or cajole it. It grows from hours and hours of practice. Those hours imprint the needed skills to reliable play what you are seeking to imprint into your fingers and spine. This eliminates all the time that impulse would spend traveling to your brain and back reducing the time needed to make a quick move from one chord (or note) to the next.

Faith is right about fingering the fret board (even if you don't strum the strings). You need to imprint those chord patterns into you Muscle Memory. So much so that your brain is simply not required (other than to pull the trigger on this riff or that chord). That, usually come form hours of practice. The ablity of any guitarist is a direct result of the hours spent practicing, NOT HOW MANY YEARS YOU HAVE DABBLED IN "PLAYING WITH THE GUITAR". Patient, Persistant, PRACTICE is how Muscle Memory happens.

Welcome to the long and winding road....

metronome. at what speed can you do the change ?

slowly watch it increase as you practice.

Measure to able to see the result

The other key ingredient, IMO, is energy/passion/motivation. Love, if you will.

I'm a songwriter primarily and so I have generally approached guitar by playing my own compositions and honestly, kind of regarded playing other people's stuff as a waste of time. When I started on GuitarTricks, I was doing the exercises and then applying them to my songwriting. That worked and I definitely made progress. But...

I made exponentially more progress when I started practicing chord changes, strumming, etc. with other artists' music that I love, esp the live versions There is something, for me, about playing along with a live track of a favorite song that gives my fingers the motivation to do their best work. Practicing technique by playing along with live tracks is now a regular part of my practice and it has seriously amped up my progress.

There are lots of reasons for this, of course, including the aforementioned energy and passion and love, but a more specific reason is that, I think, playing along with a live track you love allows you to bypass your critical thinking brain and tap into your intuitive self and also your ability to feel your way through the music rather than think your way through it.

There is research to back this up. Our brains don't know, for example, that the events we see on screen are not really happening, and we process cinematic entertainment as if it were a real experience even when our rational brain knows that it's not.. I'm going to take an educated guess that we do the same with live concert recordings (esp if they're on video) -- some instinctive part of our brain tells us that we are actually onstage with the band. And I think that motivates us to up our game so that we can play with our heroes. And I think that's as much a key to mastery as muscle memory. Combine the two and you've got a powerful set of tools in your box.

So in addition to developing muscle memory by just fingering the fretboard while doing other things, consider finding a live track of a song you love that includes those changes (songs in the key of G are very easy to find and no doubt your favorite artists have recorded many key of G songs) and let the music guide your hands.