| | | Hey Friend,
Thanks again for your patience with the bad link on the survey I sent out last week in the email.
I'm happy to say that based on the responses so far, most of you think a weekly chord course is a good idea. It looks like there is enough interest for me to start fleshing something out, so I should be able to keep myself out of trouble working on a good, structured approach to getting a solid handle on guitar chords.
If you haven't had a chance to weigh in on the survey and are still interested, you can find it here: Chord Course Survey
Smooth Chord Changes
One of the challenges that's come up multiple times for people in the survey is that of changing chords smoothly.
It's one thing to be able to play each chord on its own, but let's face it, if you can't string two or more chords together in a way that keeps the music flowing, it sounds really disjointed. And that's frustrating.
To give you a little preview of things I'll cover in the chord course, I put together this list of things to keep in mind and practice as you're working on mastering guitar chords.
- You must know each chord shape. It's not enough to recognize them in tabs or by name. Your fingers need to know them, not just your head. By that I mean you need to develop the muscle memory for each chord shape, and the only way to do this is practice.
Think of it like learning to drive or ride a bicycle. It takes a while to get comfortable with the act of driving because there's a lot going on that you have to keep straight so you don't run into things. But the more you drive, the easier it gets. After a few years, you can drive down the road without giving a second thought to the coordination between your hands and feet.
- You must know where a chord should be on the fingerboard. When you place your fingers on the fingerboard, they have yo go on the right frets to get the chord you planned on playing. move one finger to a different fret and you now have a different chord.
- You have to learn which chords work together. Most of the time when we play, there are only a handful of chord shapes we'll use for songs. Most Rock and Country songs use major, minor and dominant seven chords. Depending on the key the song was written in, you have to know which chords belong in that key. Now it's not as hard as it sounds - you can learn all this just by playing songs, and frankly, most of the songs you hear are written in just a few keys.
- You can look for efficient finger movements between chords. Does at least one finger stay on the same string?
Of course, sometimes we learn to play a chord using fingers that may not allow for efficient chord changes. You may have to retrain your fingers to play a chord shape a little differently in order to create more chord change efficiencies. I'll cover this topic in more depth in the chord course. Before you play something, analyze the chord changes to see how the fingers move for each chord. You might be able to find faster, cleaner ways to play the chord changes.
- There is no substitute for time and practice; playing chords in the most efficient manner will become second nature the more you play them.
A good exercise to help you work on smooth chord changes is take two chords that have a common note and practice the change between the two chords.
For example, in the open position (that's the first three frets on the guitar neck), play a C chord, and then try to play an A minor chord without lifting your index finger off the C note on the B string (second string). These two chords go together naturally in the key of C major, and they're relatively easy to switch between.
Simply move your middle and ring fingers while your index finger stays put. Do this slowly to get your muscles used to the change. Of course, if you're not sure even how a C or A minor chord is supposed to be fingered, even this will be a challenge... Don't worry, I'll cover all of that!
For those of you that already have a handle on basic chords and can switch between open chords fairly easily, we'll look at chord inversions in lot more depth.
Each guitar chord can be played in different spots on the guitar neck using different shapes. Knowing where chords show up can help with efficient playing, but they can also introduce more interesting ways to play musical passages. This is when guitar playing gets really fun as you start finding different sounding chords that add dimension and emotion to chord progressions (again, something I'll cover in depth in the coming months).
Fear not, just because we're going to focus on chords doesn't mean you won't learn about scales and riffing. Learning chords not only gives you a strong foundation in how the notes in scales are used to form chords, but also how the chords you play in a progression can give you all the notes you need to create very cool melodies and leads..
You might think lead playing is fast and furious shredding, but if your fingers don't know what notes to play based on the groove and chord progression being laid down, then that shredding will sound like a big, sloppy mess. Knowing the chords and the underlying notes will give you that foundation. After that, you just have to work on technique and speed. Your fingers will already be comfortable with where to play.
Stay tuned for more as we get rolling down this path. Have a great weekend, and as always, Rock ON!
Peace~
Dave |
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