Sample Guitar Articles

Learn Guitar Chords: Six Steps To Better Chord Changes

Description: This article shows you six techniques to learn chord changes effectively. Armed with these techniques your chord skills will grow and you’ll soon be tackling new chords and songs with confidence.

Learning guitar chord changes can be a hard struggle as you learn to play guitar. You can all to easily get your fingers in a frustrating tangle when you try to play new chord changes. You shouldn’t worry about this problem, though, it’s part of learning the guitar.

With the right approach to practicing chord changes, though, you can make them easier to learn. This article shows you six practice tips that will help you get your fingers changing chords faster than you ever thought possible.

1. Change without pressing the strings

When learning a new chord change start to practice without pressing the strings. Simply move your fingers into place touching their tips lightly on the string. Repeat the movement slowly until your fingers move easily into the correct positions.

This technique let’s you concentrate on getting your fingers into the right position. It will be a lot easier to press the strings down properly then. It also helps your fingers to relax. If you’re in a hurry to get the fingers into position and strum a chord your poor fingers tend to get all tensed up and make more errors.

2. Work on one finger at a time

Break the movement down by thinking about one finger at a time. Place the fingers lightly on the strings in the position of the chord you’re leaving. What movement does each one have to make to get into place for the next chord?

Try to find the smallest possible movement for each finger. When you have a finger that remains on the same string you can use the string as a guide, sliding the finger lightly along it to the destination fret. Experiment to find the easiest movement and don’t be afraid to come back and revise after working on other fingers.

3. Choose a lead finger to guide you

Your fingers are just like people, they like having someone to follow. So choose one finger as the lead for each chord, place it first and then follow with the others.

A finger on the bass strings is generally a good choice for the lead. It’s usually easy to locate as it’s playing the root note of the chord. The other fingers are then placed relative to this root note.

The other advantage of the bass first approach is that you can play this note on the first beat while you place the others. You can follow up with a strum on a later beat, leaving you a little extra time to get your other fingers in place.

4. Work on your fingering hand only

Don’t strum or pick while you practice chord fingering, focus on making the chord shapes only with your left hand (or your right, for the lefties out there). Separate the steps like this and learning chords will become much easier for you.

When you’ve got the fingers moving smoothly into position you can start working on strumming or picking. Start by just pressing the strings down and pick them one by one to ensure they all sound correctly and are not muffled.

Then you can start strumming in rhythm, but remember to go slowly at this point. Don’t suddenly be in a rush to play through the chord changes at full speed. If you practice slowly and concentrate on accurate finger placement the speed will come with time and practice.

5. Economize your movements

The less distance your fingers move when changing chords the better.

Beginners frequently lift their fingers away from the strings when releasing a chord. This forces the fingers to move further at each chord change and is a handicap to developing speed.

So, when changing chords, keep your fingers close to the strings, ideally only just releasing contact with them.

6. Relax

Don’t get so carried away with your practice that you forget to take a break.

Stretch and wiggle your fingers to relax them. Place your palm on a flat horizontal surface such as a table or your thigh. Let your arm go limp and relax your hand and fingers completely. Take a few slow, deep breaths while you’re doing it.

When you resume your practice you’ll be more concentrated. You might even be surprised to discover that your playing has improved during the break even while you weren’t practicing; while you were doing something else your mind kept working on the problem in the background.

Conclusion

Introduce these six techniques into your practice routine one at a time and you’ll be amazed how easy learning new chord changes becomes. You’ll have the confidence to tackle songs that you avoid now because you feel the chords are too hard for you to play. Your chords will become cleaner, and you’ll be able to change faster and with less mistakes.

So get practicing and polish off those new chord changes you’ve been wanting to learn.

5 Ways to Play Through Guitar Learning Blocks

Description: Guitar learners often have difficulty finishing a song because of one difficult passage. It is easy to build a collection of songs like this that you can’t quite finish. The tips in this article show you simple ways of getting over the difficulty. Armed with them you will be able to finish songs and perform them with confidence.

How many times have you started learning to play a song only to discover one little passage that trips you up? You are blocked on the whole song by just a few bars.

It might be a chord that you haven’t mastered yet, or an unfamiliar change that trips up your fingers. Whatever the cause it can be a real frustration when you have almost learned a song, but can’t finish it because you trip up somewhere. You can also get so worried about a difficult passage like this that you mess up other parts of the song, too.

Now, wouldn’t you like to learn simple ways to reduce this stress and play through problem parts without difficulty? The following five tips are going to show you just how to do that. They will help you to relax, play through the problem, and feel good because you can finish the whole song.

Of course, you’ll still have work to do to master the difficulty. But you can do it at your own pace without pressure to finish the song.

1. Silence Is Golden

If the difficult passage isn’t too long, simply stop playing for a bar or so. The contrast with the rest of the sound makes for a great effect in many songs.

To give it extra effect you can use the break to clap your hands or wave, working the audience into a frenzy of excitement.

2. Substitute chord

Try a different chord as substitute for the one you have trouble with. If you have an extended chord, like a 7th, 6th or something, just play the vanilla chord without the substitution.

You can get fancier with this by learning more about chord theory and substitutions.

3. One note

If the substitute chord is still too hard then play just one note. The root, 3rd or 5th notes of a chord are good choices in just about any situation.

You can let the note ring or repeat it as appropriate. If you start to feel confident with one note, try adding another, e.g. root and 5th, and pick them one after the other in a little arpeggio.

4. Scratch

Use your guitar to play some percussive noise. Mute the strings with your left hand, place them on the strings without pressing down and strum the strings. You’ll get a percussive scratching sound that sounds nice in many situations.

You can try other moves to vary your percussion effect: tap on the guitar wood, for example.

5. Mix it up

Finally, to give your playing some spice, use a combination of the above techniques. Mix up a little silence with one strum of a substitute chord, mix percussive scratches with single notes. Use your imagination to build up something interesting…

It is easy to build a collection of songs that you can’t quite finish because of one difficult passage. It is a big frustration when you can’t perform the songs you’ve worked to learn.

Armed with these five simple to apply tips you will be able to finish songs and perform them with confidence. You can also use them any time you forget part of a song that you are playing.

How to Sneak Up on the F Bar Chord

Description: The F bar chord is a challenging chord to learn. Beginner guitarists can easily lose confidence motivation when faced with this learning hurdle. Armed with this step by step approach, though, you can learn this chord successfully.

Novice guitarists often have a hard time learning the F bar chord. There are two reasons why this guitar chord is one of the hardest to learn.

1. You have to bar all six strings at the first fret where the string tension makes them hard to press down.

2. The wide spacing of the first frets makes it a stretch for your other fingers.

The F chord is often one of the first bar chords attempted by beginner guitarists. This is a mistake, though, and can lead to discouragement. It is easier to start learning bar chords further up the neck where string tension is lower and frets less widely spaced.

A good place to start is the A, D and E chords at the 5th and 7th frets. The tension and fret widths are quite comfortable here; further up the neck things get harder as the frets get narrower. If you are ready to tackle the F bar chord, though, you can make things easier by following the progressive approach described below.

3 Note Chord

The three note F chord form below is one easy way to get started, strum only the three fingered strings.

e x||---|---|---|

b  ||-1-|---|---|

g  ||---|-2-|---|

d  ||---|---|-3-|

a x||---|---|---|

E x||---|---|---|

Three note chord forms like this are called triads. This one gets you used to the F position without barring the strings.

Add Two String Bar

You can build on the F triad by adding a partial bar on the 1st and 2nd strings. Use the same fingering as the triad but lay your first finger down to press the first two strings.

E Chord Fingering

Play open E chords using your middle, ring and little fingers instead of the first, middle and ring fingers usually used. You prepare your fingers for the F chord using this position.

e 0||---|---|---|

b 0||---|---|---|

g  ||-2-|---|---|

d  ||---|-4-|---|

a  ||---|-3-|---|

E 0||---|---|---|

Slide your fingers up one fret to the 2nd and 3rd frets and play only the fingered strings and you’ve got another F triad.

Another Two String Bar

Now you can extend the E chord form with a small bar on the first two strings. Slide the E form up to the 2nd and 3rd fret, then bar the 1st and 2nd strings with the first finger. You are nearly there, you have five of the six strings covered.

Full F Bar Chord

Now you just have to extend your first finger to bar all six strings. Place the middle finger first as an anchor point to position the others around. Then lay your index finger across the strings behind the 1st fret and squeeze it onto the fretboard by pulling back your elbow.

Take your time to build strength to hold the bar down firmly. Work for short periods and stop as soon as your hand feels tired. Too much haste could lead to a hand injury.

The step by step approach described above will give you the confidence to learn the F bar chord. Practice slowly and in small doses, your patience will pay off in the long run.

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