Tag Archives: chord

Practice – Chord Changes

by

0

Apparently the hardest part for beginners is changing between chords.  I can assure you, this rumor is correct.  The callused fingers are nothing compared to trying to get your left hand moving quick enough to catch up to your right hand.  Justin guitar has an exercise called One Minute Change where you set a timer for one minute and see how many times you can go between two chords.  The goal is to switch chords 60 times in 60 seconds.  This takes time and practice to get to; most people start with about 15 changes in a minute.

I start off with D and A, set the timer on my phone and start counting.  It doesn’t sound quite as pretty, but I get through 29 changes in a minute.  Nice for the first try!  I switch to D and E and then E and A and get through a similar amount of changes.  Now I can switch between chords!  Now it’s time to learn a song… but wait!  It’s almost the end of the month!!  Nooooooo!

Practice – The D Chord

by

0

The first chord taught in the beginner course of http://www.justinguitar.com is the D Chord.  Pretty easy.  Looks like this.

Chord-O-D

 

Oh yeah, I know how to read that!  The line on the left represents the string on the top, going all the way down to the string on the right, which would be the one on the bottom.  The “X” at the top of the picture means you do not hit that string when strumming.  The “O” at the top means you strum it as an open string.  Then you place your fingers on the fret where the black dots are.  Now you know the D Chord, too!  You can strum it together, and then pic all the strings individually to make sure they are all clear.