Hey Friend,

Back to work!

Here are the exercises to practice the E major to A major chord changes. This is the I to IV progression in the key of E major.

There was a very similar exercise in the last key where A represented the I chord and E was the V chord. 

For all intents and purposes, these two chord arrangements sound essentially the same. The difference is the context of the key you happen to be working with.

What's nice about how music works is, despite that these repeated chord combinations could seem to open you up to some potential confusion, they rarely will. For most songs, you'll work with chords primarily from the key the song was written in and your brain will automatically point you to the correct chords.

In fact, between your muscle memory and your brain, the patterns of chord progressions and shapes get ingrained. It won't matter what the key is, your body will go to the correct positions.

If you're still a beginner, this might sound like BS to you, but it's not. The only thing standing between you and fluid chord play is simply repetition  The more times you form each shape on the guitar neck and work through chord change patterns, the faster your muscles will memorize those patterns. 

Shapes and patterns, shapes and patterns...

Kind of takes the mystery of it out a bit, doesn't it? But it really is true.

The longer I teach people about guitar, the more I find this practical approach is helpful.

Every famous guitar player had to go through the learning stage where they practiced the patterns until their fingers were on autopilot. They no longer have to think about where to put their fingertips - it just happens.

It doesn't have to take years, either. Every time I give you an exercise, regardless of whether it's a chord you've seen before, practice it as if it's the first time you've ever seen it. You cannot play it too many times.

Repetition is the name of the game. Until you're fingers can go directly to the right frets on the right strings without you thinking about it, you haven't repeated the chord enough times.

There's five different shapes for both E and A in today's set, so let's get to it:

Don't get discouraged if some of the chord changes are challenging. If anything, you should be excited that there are many different ways to play each chord - and a lot of them are really easy to play. You've got a lot of options, so do the best you can on the hard ones, and enjoy the easy ones. Rock on!

Peace~

Dave