Techniques To Improve Your Speed When Changing Guitar Chords
So, just how fast can your fretting hand move from chord to chord? If you really want to learn how to play guitar effectively and even start composing, you need to be able to change chords quickly and accurately.
As with any complicated human skill, in order to learn to play any instrument you have to develop the brain to muscle coordination, also known as muscle memory, that is required for playing the instrument. People who are skilled in basketball hone their shooting skills by focusing on their hand eye coordination and muscle memory which allows them to aim the ball squarely into the hoop without much time. Practice, experience and skill teach the muscles of the arms, wrists, and hands the proper movements and strength that must be used to make a basket. Your whole body, from your brain to your muscles, will develop a strict series of movements that help you perform these functions.
Learning how to play guitar is the same way. You need to train your arms, wrists, and fingers to play the chords correctly and with the needed speed, as well as train the eyes, ears, and brain to work together to play the music you read on the score. All of this becomes the mechanism that is working when the person playing the guitar begins changing chords.
When playing guitar chords, you have to first memorize all chords needed to play the song you want to play. Then you have to visualize how the fingers on the fretting hand needs to move in order to play the right chords. Barre chords need to focus on the index finger, as that will create the “bar” that the rest of the fingers work from.
That index finger should be the first one that is placed on the fret, so that the rest of the fingers can follow suit and create the rest of the chord. Even when you’re playing a simple or broken chord, the importance of the index finger continues to be part of playing that chord.
Basically it is your index finger and thumb that create your anchor on the guitar neck to make it possible for all the other fingers to press the rest of the strings for the chord. With a simple chord, you’ll put the index finger on the highest string, which is the easiest to reach for that finger; once it’s established, you can then use the other fingers to reach the remaining frets.
Make sure you’re keeping up with the song’s tempo, while figuring out what chord is coming next and anticipating it appropriately, so that you’re ready. You might want to slow down if you’re practicing a new song and you’re new to guitar playing, just to get the chord placement and timing down. If you can get through that and play the whole song with no mistakes, you can slowly speed up your tempo until it’s fast enough.
The most difficult chord changes that need to be made are changes from simple chords to barre chords, changes from barre chords to simple chords, and changes in chords that require you to move your fingers quite a distance from the last chord. You will want to isolate these changes and practice them separately. If you still have trouble at the slower tempo, just skip the last beat of the last chord and employ the extra time to put your fret hand in the correct position for the next fret.
Just keep on practicing these chord changes until a short passage can be played through without mistakes. Once you can accomplish this, you can go back to practicing playing the entire song as described above. You can switch between frantic strumming and plucking individual strings to achieve certain moods and effects with the music; you can even speed up and slow down your strumming to emphasize certain song sections or lead up to the chorus.
It’s always best to learn a song by actually learning to play it the way the original artist played on their guitar, then later you can add your extra techniques based on your own ear and taste. This will allow you to develop the skill needed to move your hands in the proper manner to quickly make difficult chord changes.
If you do this for every song you are learning, and you will soon be able to play through a new song like an experienced guitarist.
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