Waiiit a minute .... I feel Aaaaaallllright

So, of course I didn't just stick with trying to learn E minor and A minor. I tried to learn all sorts of chords. Learning chords is fun. If you can finger them correctly, you make the guitar sound cool, and that is what we are about right now.

Plus the more I finger, the better my calluses get. Again, this is a pretty big challenge in the first few weeks. Don't get frustrated. Eventually you "feel alright."

I learned the fingerings off my Rock House Method DVD, but there are tons of fingering resources out there. Here is a cool little site that makes seeing guitar chord fingering easy.

http://www.chordbook.com/guitarchords.php

I am sticking with A, C, D, E, and G major (the "maj" button) and A, D, and E minor (the "m" button). Mostly because they seem like I can actually finger them. Now that I know a little more, I think I would have concentrated on "Moveable Power Chords" first, but more on that another time.

So, now we get to the wait a minute part.

Changing chords is a beast for me as a beginner. I mean painfully slow. All the lessons say, "Play slow enough that you can change chords with the beat, in rhythm" Well, if it takes 5 - 10 seconds to change chords, there is no beat slow enough to stay "in rhythm." And in my experience, simply "practicing" didn't help me get very much faster changing chords. I was practicing plenty, but I knew I must be practicing wrong.

So, I will say again, skip "ahead" to power chords and moveable power chords. But if you must learn how to practice "regular" chords, read ahead. I think these "regular" chords are referred to as "open" chords, because you play some of the strings "open" (i.e. without fingering them) but I could be wrong about that.

OK, I went off and checked. I wasn't wrong. Yeah! :-)

So, here are two simple practice tips for changing chords (and really these apply to any fingering change). I picked them off a thread on a forum somewhere that I can't seem to find again...

1) Practice "pulling off" the chord and then "hammering on." NO, this is not some new birth control method. Get your mind out of that gutter. Simply finger a chord. Now pull your fingers off the strings about 1/4 to 1/2 inch. Try not to move the fingers relative to each other. Now put them right back on the chord. Strum, pick each individual string, make corrections.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Essentially you are practicing changing from the chord, back to the chord. But it is still practicing a chord change. Incidentally, when you are trying "not to move the fingers relative to each other" you are practicing a chord "shape." At least I think you are. I think a chord shape is just a way of holding your fingers. Depending on where you put this shape on the neck, you get a different chord. Again, I could be wrong about that, but ... yeah, I checked again. Whew. I did realize when I was checking that it is important to point that not all shapes are "moveable."

Which brings us back to moveable power chords. They are probably the easiest moveable shapes to learn. I know. I just love to repeat myself. And I am such a tease.

Incidentally, that is another reason why E minor and A minor make great starting chords. They are almost the same shape.

2) OK. The other practice tip for changing chords. Practice moving one finger at a time.

So practicing E major to C major, you might first practice moving your pointer finger (or first finger) down one string from the 3 to the 2 string (on the first fret). Do this over and over, back and forth.

Then practice moving only the middle (2nd) finger down one string (from 5 to 4) on the 2nd fret. You will have to lift the ring (3rd) finger off the frets to make this work.

Each time you do this, strum the resulting "chord" which may sound nasty. It may sound really cool, too. Awesome! Pluck each string and make sure it rings out. Adjust your fingering until it does.

Practice each finger individually and then start moving two fingers at a time. Say move fingers 1 and 2 together. Hey! For this chord change those two fingers retain the same "shape." That makes it easier to move them together.

This is where I learned a really cool sounding chord that I don't what it is. C major, without the 5th string fretted (which is an A, incidentally. More on that another time.) So it is just 2nd string, 1st fret and 4th string, second fret. Strum strings 5 to 1. Switch between that and E major and it sounds cool.

Sounding cool is good at this point. Heck, sounding cool is good at any point, at least as far as I am concerned.

Eventually, you practice moving all 3 fingers together. Which is - "duh" - the actual chord change.

My last thought today is that playing guitar for me is less about learning each individual chord, scale or song and more about learning how to have fun on the instrument. So I try to mess around all the time and make it sound good. And by that I mean sound good to me, the hell with what anyone else thinks...

Next time: Let's play a song already!