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I am still keeping my practise going, around 30-40 mins a day.
I am practising trying to get all the chords I know to sound clean and clear.
A couple of questions: I sometimes catch one of the other strings with the inside of my fingernail when moving from one chord to another, they are pretty short, but do you think I need to trim them right back, or will this be avoided in time?
And does anyone have any tips regarding switching chords, it does take a few seconds to change from one to another, are there any things I can do to help with this, or is it just a case of practise shorting the time down.
I am not trying to move on to quickly, I am still practising the same thing, and my fingers are on the way to not hurting so much, I think!
I assume this is with your left hand (assuming you are playing a right handed guitar) if so you would want to keep your nails short on this hand. If they are already short then it will most likely sort itself out the more you get used to playing.
Changing chords mainly comes down to practice and practice will make perfect. Some chords are much easier to change between as they have common notes - for example the transition between Em to G should be easy as you index finger stays where it is an acts as a pivot. C to A is a similar situation.
Use a metronome and set it to a speed where you can play, for example, 4 strums of a chord on each beat and change successfully in time for the next 4 beats. It doesn't matter how slow it is but then slowly speed it up ensuring that you only move on when you have it completely clean. This is a great way to monitor your progress and I am sure you will see improvements every day.
If you don't already have one, you can easily download a metronome to use on your computer!
Start learning some simple songs like some Beatles songs. Either check online resources or get yourself a copy of the Beatles Fake Book which contains the lyrics and chords of loads of their songs.
Only tip I would offer is to make sure you can see plenty of the second knuckle on your left hand (nearest the finger tip). This hopefully means that the inside fleshy part of your fingers aren't touching the string below and that only the finger tip is pushing down on the string. Its a mistake alot of my students make to begin with. Keep it up!
terraman wrote:Thanks to you both, I will follow your suggestions, it will give a bit of a structure to my practising.
Rich.
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I'd suggest that 30 to 40 mins a day is probably overkill if you're a beginner.
As Olly said, the fingernails should be trimmed.
What is important is that you are learning and practicing chords in a logical order. By logical order, I mean chords that are likely to be used together. Drawing on Olly's suggestion C to A...I wouldn't be inclined to agree with it, simply because there aren't many songs that I can think of that you're going to NEED to play C to A.
Now, if he meant to say C to Am, that's a different tune all together, and you definitely want to learn that, as they are used all the time.
I'm not sure how long you have been learning, but if you don't know the Big 9 and have not learned how to transition between commonly used chords, I'd ignore bigian's advice on barre chords and the like, they would be detrimental and ridiculous at this point for your development.
Now, I mentioned the big 9, so what are they?
A Am C D Dm E Em F and G. When you have those down and can play in common chord progressions and transition between them, you'll be much more better situated.
So some of these common chord connections would be:
D G and A
G C and D
C F and G
C Am F and G (you can also experiment with Em, anywhere you normally have a G)
Am F Dm and E (You can also experiment with C anytime you have an Am and vise versa)
A D and E
When you have those transitions down, you can play a lot of songs that use those chords in some combination.
Instructor wrote: Drawing on Olly's suggestion C to A...I wouldn't be inclined to agree with it, simply because there aren't many songs that I can think of that you're going to NEED to play C to A.
Now, if he meant to say C to Am, that's a different tune all together, and you definitely want to learn that, as they are used all the time.
To be honest I did not give it much thought from a musical perspective, more from the point that it gets two of your fingers moving while one can remain anchored but you are absolutely right with what you say and C to Am is used a lot and sounds good!
The only place I see C moving to A off the top of my head is actually the chorus of sweet child o mine, and actually it's A to C. I'd guess it was Am to C but the Slash line superimposed over it takes that theory and tosses it as it's in A Major. The other place is in the Chorus to Comfortably Numb, I'd just make the point that from a beginners standpoint he's likely to see a lot more of C to Am in actual use.
