First let's take a look at some exercises you can use to practice your open chords with the metronome. I'll show you a bunch of different ways to work on this, but the idea is not for you to sit and do every exercise that I show. The idea is for you to understand how to come up with exercises that can help you improve something specific you might be having trouble with.
You can choose any of the open chords to play along with the metronome, but here we'll just go between a simple A chord and the slightly more challenging Csus2 chord.
We'll start at 80 beats per minute (BPM). You can start at a slower or faster tempo, but don't go too fast! The idea here is that we'll bump up the tempo by 2 beats per minute, slow it by 1 BPM, then faster again by 2 BPM, and so forth.
I assume we have to wait unitl beat 4 before we start the change between chords? In other words...
Fret the chord, Strum the chord on beat one, hold the fretting... 2, 3, 4 then (and ONLY) then, change the fretting (left hand) to the second chord. Correct?
Or are we supposed to switch the fretting whenever we want (e.g. on beat 2)?
Mike Olekshy1 year ago
Hello - thanks for your question! You are correct, work on only changing to the next chord after the strum on the 4th beat. If you find you don't have enough time to change your fingers to the next chord without interrupting the groove or tempo, then practice slower. Do your best to maintain a steady consistent tempo while playing through the chord changes. Hope this helps!!
