Playing Chords On Guitar Is HARD... Here's How To Make It EASY
Do you switch chords too slow?
Do you always feel like you’re ‘chasing’ the music you’re playing because you’re falling behind on the chord changes?
Do you end up feeling tense when you’re playing because you’re trying so hard to pley the chords in time?
Well, I have a simple way... as well as a slightly less simple way.
The first, simplest way is to simply cut all but one of the strings on your guitar. This makes chords physically impossible!
And as anyone with a car -- and therefore a check-engine light -- knows, the best way to solve your problems is always avoidance.
(Trust me on that. I have a lot of experience in car ownership since I had a lot of cars in the past few years! ) (1)
It is possible, however, that you are one of those rare souls that prefers the inferior way of actually fixing your problems rather than intelligently and wisely avoiding them.
In this unfortunate case, the process will look slightly different.
While it may not be as easy as cutting off five of your guitar strings, it also isn’t that much harder.
In the video below, I’ll show you a few super simple exercises that you can play immediately, regardless of your level, and that will give you faster and smoother chord changes - for both "simple" and "complex" chords.
- This is obviously a joke and is not meant as advice. I can barely change the oil on my car, and if you take your mechanical advice from a guitar player... you kinda deserve anything that happens to your poor, poor engine...
Maybe you also feel like you just don't know enough about chords in general? If this is the case, you should check out my Complete Chord Mastery guitar course. This course will give you everything you need to know about chords and harmony on the guitar!
Video Transcription
Hello internet, so nice to see you! I'm getting a lot of emails and comments from people that would like to learn more music theory, but they say they are slow at playing chords, meaning that maybe they are playing a chord or two, but the switch between the chords is slow.
And that happens both for things like the cowboy chord like that, or for things like the jazz chords, okay, or things like that, and people, again, they feel they are slow in changing those. Well, it's hard to play this stuff super fast, but there are ways to train that, okay?
So I'm gonna show you a few of my secret exercises to get faster at switching chords, okay? And those are very simple, again, they can be applied with simple cowboy chords, okay? With power chords, they can be applied with the bar chords, they can be applied to jazz chords, they can be applied to anything you can play on the guitar, okay?
Anyway, any kind of chord that you can play on the guitar, in fact, every time you have something that has more than one note, you can apply those exercises. So if you have any technical difficulty playing those things, do what I'm telling you in this video and you'll be fine, okay?
The first thing is to relax, okay? Playing more than one note at a time, it's genuinely hard. People like BB King said that they could not do it, so I mean, it must not be that easy if BB King could not do it.
First of all, second, okay, this also demonstrates that you can become a guitar legend without being able to play a chord. But playing a chord is fun, so let's do that, okay? The first thing is to identify the difficult chord.
For the sake of argument, I'm gonna pick a fairly difficult chord to play. Okay, because I mean it's if you if you are gonna get challenged by it by it It's right that I am challenged by it, too. So I'm gonna pick this chord here This is an A E F C you don't see all the notes in the transcription system because when I play the E and F goes by The transcription system goes like that's impossible.
You can't play two notes this close Okay, as you see the fingering is fairly complex is the seventh fret on the fourth string the ninth fret on the Third string the sixth fret on the second string and the eighth fret on the first string You can apply these to any other chord, okay?
You don't have to use this specific chord here, but it's a chord that sounds beautiful and gives me some problem, especially when I change it with something that maybe not exactly super close, like those.
Okay, so I need to learn it too, okay? And I need to get more fluent in that. And while I'm doing it, I'm showing you how I'm doing it. So the first thing I do is realize one thing. Playing the chord, given enough time, it's easy.
It's switching in real time between different chords that it's hard, okay? Of course. So the first thing I do on your hand, it's to get better at playing this specific chord with the least possible amount of tension in my hand.
How do I do it? Well, I'm going to simply play the chord. And I'm going to relax my fingers. So now the chord is muted. I am touching the strings, but there is no tension in my hand, okay? And I'm just going to go back and forth in between those two things.
So pressing and relaxing, pressing and relaxing, pressing and relaxing, and not even moving the fingers. I'm just trying to feel the difference between pressing the strings down and relaxing, okay? And I'm going to do this for, say, 30 seconds, okay?
It's not going to be long, but I'm going to do it. Even if it looks stupid and easy, I need to feel that. Because the next one is what I call the slap your leg exercise. It works this way. I am fingering the chord.
And I'm going to take my hand away from the guitar and I'm going to slap my leg, okay? And then I'm going to come back and play the exact same chord and slap my leg and come back and play the chord and slap my leg and play the chord and slap my leg, okay?
I'm going to do that for a few minutes. or until, for a minute or two, not 30 minutes, okay? But I'm gonna do it until it starts to become more natural. Why am I slapping my leg? Because I'm some kind of masochist?
No. It's because when I slap my leg, I need to flatten my hand, and so now the hand is in a neutral position, and I have to rewind the position of the chord, okay? If I just play and take the hand away, I can keep the fingers in the same position, and so I can cheat, in a sense.
If I slap my leg, I know that I have to extend my fingers, and then I have to come back and reconstruct the chord position. This means, essentially, that I am practicing, reconstructing this chord, replaying this chord several times in a minute, okay?
You see, it takes probably three seconds to do this movement, so in a minute I can do this 20 times, which is a lot of repetitions, okay? Okay? You do this for a minute or until your leg starts to be sore.
There! So, again, the first exercise is only press, relax, press, relax. The second is slap your leg and play the chord, slap your leg and play the chord, slap your leg and play the chord. Okay, and again, you could do this with any kind of chord, okay?
And if not that, any kind, simple, complex, not a problem. Okay? Once you've done a minute or two of that, you start to have the shape. Now you pick a second chord, possibly a chord you know already, and you are going to practice exchanging, moving from one chord to the other, from your difficult chord to the chord you know already, and vice versa.
So you have your difficult chord, okay, and I'm going to play, say, this chord as the chord I know already. Okay, this is 5, 5, 5, 7, okay? You notice that I don't even care to give a name to those chords.
If you want to know what they are, think about it, okay, or write the name down in the comment, I don't care about a name, I care about a sound. Anyway, I'm going to use this chord. So the idea would be to move between this chord and this chord a few times, but rather than doing it the way I'm doing it right now, I'm going to do it in a very special way.
Now pay attention because this is the secret sauce. It works if you do it the way I'm going to explain it right now. You have to move between those two chords, and you have to do it in three phases, okay?
Follow me here. You're going to do this, whenever you're going to switch the chord, you're going to go through three phases. Phase number one is going to call Relax. Phase number two is going to call Touch.
And phase number three is going to call the Squeeze. Okay, Relax, Touch and Squeeze. You're going to hear this over and over and over again now, okay? So what happens here? Yeah, you are going to play the first chord.
And you're going to do this. Phase number one, you are going to relax. So you just relax the fingers. The fingers now are still touching the strings, okay? It's important, they are still touching the string, but there is no energy in them, okay?
No strength. If I come there and grab your fingers, I will be able to move them with no problem, okay? So you go from playing to just relaxing. Okay? The aim of this is to take away all the tension from your hand.
Phase number two. If you're going to touch and touch only the position of the next chord, which is this, okay? Or whatever other chord you picked. I'm touching only, so there is no pressure in there, okay?
And phase number three is that I'm going to squeeze all those three strings, all those strings are not all those things at the same time and when I'm coming back I'm gonna do the same first I relax then I touch my difficult chord and again still muted and then only when all the fingers are in position I'm gonna squeeze.
Relax touch squeeze relax touch squeeze at the beginning you don't have to do it this fast it could be done at this speed relax take a breath touch take a breath squeeze and then relax take a breath touch take a breath squeeze.
It is of vital importance vital importance that you do not have those phases bleed into each other you relax and you relax on don't move the fingers you touch the new position and you just touch a new position you don't squeeze it's not that one finger is down maybe in the other up no they are all touching the strings and then you squeeze them all together you are gonna think.
So if every time I change a chord I have to go to those three phases I'm actually going slower not faster aha do not misunderstand me this is an exercise this is not what you do in real life that's an exercise that trains your hand to do the right thing in real life you're simply going to change the chords they practice the exercise I just gave you teaches your fingers to relax really fast before you switch the chord so that when you go from this chord to this chord the fingers relax really fast you don't think about it because you made it a habit by doing the exercise before.
Your fingers relax really fast and they are relaxed when they move and relaxed fingers move faster. You go into a new position and squeeze all together. Okay, again, in real life you will not think about all those things and you will not think about the three phases, separate the three phases, etc.
But as a practice, you do that, so you insert the good habit of relaxing really fast into your fingers. Okay, and later it becomes automatic. Do not confuse playing and practicing. When you practice, sometimes you do absurd things to make your fingers do the right thing.
When you play, you are just making a sound and having fun with the instrument. Okay, let's not confuse those two things. Okay, this exercise, relax, relax, touch, and squeeze. It's a practice. Okay. You do these exercises for, let's say, five minutes.
Okay? Then, you can do a whole cycle of all those three exercises, okay? The squeeze relax only, the slap your leg, and the relax touch squeeze with another chord. But if you do another cycle of those three exercises, you want to change the other chord.
So you want to keep your difficult chord, but maybe put another chord. Okay, so first you just do the slap your thigh exercise, okay, slap your leg exercise. And then, you will do relax, touch, squeeze, relax, touch, squeeze, relax, touch, squeeze, squeeze, relax, touch, squeeze, it's harder to do it when I'm talking.
It's much easier to do it if I shut up and just do it, okay, but relax, touch, squeeze, relax, touch, squeeze, okay? Simple repetition of those exercises. If done with, how can I say, you have to be present, you cannot do this in front of the TV.
You cannot do this while you're thinking something else. You have to spend those five minutes actually being present, being mindful of what your fingers are doing, okay? That's important. If you do that with mindfulness, with presence of mind, deliberately peeling how your fingers are moving, just a few minutes of those exercises do make a difference.
You see a difference from before to after in five, ten minutes. If you do this mindfully, if you do this automatically, if you just do that, if you do that, if you put the autopilot, if you're just watching the TV while you're doing that, nothing happens.
That's just the way it is, okay? If I had a way to practice in front of the TV, guys, I will give it to you. Probably I will sell it to you, and that would be a rich man. But, okay, but there's none, okay?
So, that's how you do it. Simple exercises, you do this, and you get faster at switching chords. These, again, were sweet. Simple chords, whether you start with the simple chords like E minor, G, C, etc.
It works with super complex chords, it works with the finger contortion chords, it works all the time for everything. If you're playing anything and it's difficult to play and it involves playing chords, you do those three exercises, everything gets easier.
Give them a try. Then, if you want to have some chords to learn, if you want to learn, also, chords work on guitar. If you want to have entire sets of chords, you can put together to create music. If you want to, actually know how all this harmony thing works, I would recommend you guys take my course, Complete Chord Mastery. Okay, go to the link down here, check it out, because we start from scratch, but we move really fast, okay?
And even from the very first session, you start playing stuff that you haven't played before, and you become a better musician in the very first session, okay? And I'm showing you how to use chord and harmony on the guitar, so that you can play any style you want, and actually get to understand your guitar fretboard in a way that makes you a better musician, it makes you a better player, even if you are just reading a score or just playing a chord chart,
or if you're just rearranging your song, it makes you a better composer or songwriter if you are writing your own music. It makes you a better musician overall, it probably actually makes you a musician, okay?
Because you start understanding music, how it applies to the fretboard, and not just understanding the guitar. So, check it out. This is Tommaso Zillio for musictheoryforguitar.com and until next time, enjoy.