Changing Chords

Changing Chords

While at this point I have a few different chords I can play, most songs that aren't drone metal or Indian classical ragas use more than one chord, meaning that it's important to be able to change chords, preferably in time with the song. 

Changing chords isn't easy at first, and it's really one of those things you only learn through repetition. Your fingers are making a weird shape they don't normally need to make, and until you've done this enough times its hard to contort your muscle to the needed shape quickly enough. Over time the shapes of the chords, and the motion of changing between them becomes muscle memory, and at that point there's literally nothing too it.

The first chord change I worked on was A:

 

To E:

 

This is a pretty easy chord change, move your first finger back a fret, and move the 2nd and 3rd up a fret. It's pretty easy, but even then it feels weird. You get the feeling that your first finger wants to go up along with the 2nd and 3rd, and you can end up stopping the movement trying to remember exactly what to do with each finger. Either way, it was easy enough after a bit of practice.

After that I picked up G: 

To C:

 

While these 2 chords aren't the easiest ones to change between (they require the movement of all 3 fingers to basically totally new parts of the guitar), they're an important change to have down, seeing as the G-C-Am-F chord progression is the most commonly utilized one. This took kind of a lot of work, at first I had to look at my fingers and slowly maneuver them to exactly where they needed to go. Then switch again. And again. Doing this until it started cramping for a few sessions got the basic motion down, and then I just played songs until I naturally sped the progression up to where it should be.

My copy of Play Guitar in 10 Easy Lessons by Jon Buck proved pretty useless in learning how to change chords. I don't think this is really Job Buck's fault, as it's mostly muscle memory anyways.  He provided 3 chord changes he recommends for beginners, C to F, E to Am, and A7 to Bm7, which were picked out because they're really really easy. None of them require more than a single motion to change between, which makes them easy to grasp. While it's fine to start simple and get harder, A7 to Bm7 and E to Am aren't even common changes, and it's really more important to know the most common changes then waste time on easy but obscure ones.

Beyond that he offered a few unhelpful words of advice such as, "Look for quick and easy finger movements between chords where you can leave one or more fingers in place throughout the change" (37) and "The easiest way into this is to look for and memorize links between chords, so that you cut back on finger movement" (37) both of which I figured out on my own anyways, and I assume anyone would while slowly drilling the motion into their head.