How to Change Chords on the Guitar

Hey guys! Welcome to Lesson #3 of the series of Ten Basic Guitar Lessons brought to you by TheGuitarLesson.com. I’m Tom Fontana and if you remember in lesson two, we learned a bunch of chords, how to fret them correctly, so I hope you’ve been practicing those fingerings because today, we’ll be learning how to change them between those chords. And really, this is an exciting point in your learning how to play the guitar since this is where you start making real music, so it will be a really fun lesson. Now, chord changing can be one of the most challenging aspects of learning how to play the guitar. When I was first learning the guitar, just getting those fingerings, those chord fingerings to be able to form and to play the chords properly with all the notes ringing true can be a challenge in itself. A lot of times, you’re changing in between them and actually hitting the notes that you wan to hit. Now, I just want to tell you that all guitarists struggle with this in the beginning. I mean, I did. Eric Clapton did. Nobody has ever picked up a guitar and instinctively knew how to change from a D to a G. But the good news is that it gets easier with time. You just have to get your fingers used to it, and it takes practice but soon, you’ll be doing all these chord changes automatically and you’ll never forget. It’s like riding a bike. And the best way of learning is really by doing, so let’s do it. Let’s start with a shared finger chord change, A Minor to C Major for example. Now, hold down the A Minor and we’ll change to C Major from there. Now, all you have to do there is lift your third finger and move it up to string A, fret 3 and you’re at C. Now, back to A Minor, start out slow then build speed. And you can strum as well. Okay, great! So that’s your first chord change. It’s pretty simple since all you have to do to get from the A Minor to the C Major is move one finger over. Just practice that and remember to always make sure that each string rings clearly, that your fingers aren’t touching any of the other strings. They shouldn’t be touching. Otherwise, you’ll bend the strings. Just do it slowly at first and build speed as you get more confident. Now, that’s like a changing from the A Minor to the E Major. So fret the A Minor, you’ll move your fingers up one string starting with your first finger and up at E, so you’ll just move each finger up one string. So you’re in A Minor, lift your first finger and move it up to string G fret 1. Now, lift your other two fingers both at the same time, and just move them up one string from where they were and just practice this. [Demonstration] You can add single strums. So remember to use your first finger as an anchor when changing in between these chords and just position the other fingers after you move the anchor, okay? Also, make sure you don’t take your fingers apart if you don’t need to. It just really waste time and energy so whenever you can, just keep your fingers in the same position and just change like that. So again, pause the video here if you need to and just practice that a bit. Now, let’s move on to another easier chord change, the E Minor and G Major. So hold E Minor, move your second finger over to fret 3 string E and just place your other fingers on to the bottom strings at fret 3. Now, we’re strumming. [Demonstration] Good! So you want to practice that as well along with all the other chord changes. And I want to teach you a very popular chord progression that literally hundreds of songs use, maybe even thousands. Actually, we’ll be using it in the next lesson as well when we learn our first song. But good things come to those who wait, so for now, let’s just learn how to change in between chords, okay? So we’ll be playing G Major, D Major, C Major. This is a very popular chord progression. Loads and loads of songwriters use it from Johnny Cash to Guns N’ Roses. It’s 1-4-5 chord progression but you don’t really need to know what that means at this stage. We’ll learn about that in a future lesson, so let’s just see the chord changes. Play a G Major, lift all fingers and move them to D by placing your first finger down first. It will be your anchor again, the same for C. Your index finger moves first then back to G. And again, your first finger moves first. And at first, you’ll be thinking about where to put which finger. But if you practice the individual chord fingerings enough, the chord changes will be much, much easier since your first finger will move first and the rest of your fingers will just naturally line up shaping the chord shape that you want, okay? It also helps to envision your next chord before a change, so don’t think about it at the moment of changing but a bit before so your fingers are already getting ready for the next chord and your brain is already passing little impulses to your fingers. So practice the G-D-C progression slowly for now, then a bit faster, and just speed up when all your strings are ringing clearly. This will take a while and I don’t want to rush you. You don’t need to rush. It’s very, very important that you advance at your own pace, and remember that playing slow and clean is always, always better than fast and sloppy. So just practice these chord changes, try to get all the strings to ring clean and just burn those fingerings in through your mind. That’s really the basic element of all this. [Demonstration] Once you get that down. You’ll be able to play your first song. We’ll learn that in the next lesson. It will go like this. [Demonstration] Great! There you go! But first, you really have to learn the fingerings and changes. I just can’t emphasize that enough. So again, make sure all your strings are ringing clean and you’re not muting any strings by accidentally touching them. Use your first finger as an anchor and keep your fingers together whenever possible during a chord change, and just have fun. Once your fingers start hurting, just stop, take a rest and try again later. There’s no point in overdoing it whatsoever. It just wouldn’t be enjoyable that way. Your fingers will start developing calluses with time so they won’t hurt anymore, don’t worry about that. That will take about a couple of weeks. It goes pretty quickly. Now, I know this is all hard at first. Every single guitarist went through it, but really, just know that you’re building on a very solid foundation of guitar knowledge here and these skills that you learn now, they’ll be yours forever. So keep that in mind. We’ll be building on these techniques later on and not just on the basic lessons but also on the songs we will be learning later on. The best way to learn is by doing, so go practice now. Once you’re ready, download the next lesson from TheGuitarLesson.com. That would be the fourth lesson out of the Ten Basic Lessons. We’ll be learning your first song actually, so it will be a lot of fun. Okay, go back, practice, and I’ll see you in the lesson. Bye!