How to change chords smoothly

Why chord changes are hard

Each chord on its own is a shape you can learn in a few days. In a song, you have to leave one shape and land on the next on the beat, while the strumming hand keeps going. The time you have is short, and most beginners lift every finger, look for the new frets one by one, and fall behind. The fix is not speed: it is to move less and to move all fingers at once.

Anchor fingers: what does not move

Between many pairs of chords, some fingers stay on the same fret of the same string. These are anchor fingers: leave them down and move only the others. From C to Am, the index on the 1st fret of the B string and the middle finger on the 2nd fret of the D string stay where they are; only the ring finger moves, from the A string to the G string.

C

Am

Other pairs share a shape rather than a position. Am and E are the same three-finger shape one string apart: keep the fingers in shape and slide the whole hand by one string. Em and G do not share a finger, but going from Em to C, the middle finger only slides one fret up the A string... or play Em with fingers 2 and 3 and Am with 2, 3 and 1: the pair 2-3 just moves over by one string.

G to C: a smarter G

The G of lesson 4 uses the middle, index and ring fingers. Many players use ring, middle and little finger instead: ring on the 3rd fret of the low E, middle on the 2nd fret of A, little finger on the 3rd fret of the high E. Now look at C: ring on the 3rd fret of A, middle on the 2nd fret of D. From G, the ring and middle fingers just move together across one string, and the index drops onto the B string. The G to C change, one of the most common in music, becomes one movement.

G

C

Five habits for clean changes

• Move all fingers together. Practise lifting the whole chord a few millimetres and landing the next one in one go, instead of placing fingers one by one.
• Look ahead. Know the next chord before you need it, and picture its shape while you still play the current one.
• Use the last stroke. On the last "and" of the bar, let go of the chord and strum the open strings while your fingers travel. The open strings blur into the change and the rhythm never stops: every guitarist does it.
• Keep the strumming hand going, even if the new chord is not ready. A slightly messy chord in time sounds better than a perfect one late.
• Slow down, with a metronome. Play one chord per bar at 60 BPM, then two per bar, then faster.

The one-minute change drill

Pick two chords, for example G and C. Set a timer for one minute and switch between them as many times as you can, strumming once on each chord to check it rings. Count the changes and write the number down. Do it every day with a few pairs - G and C, C and D, D and G, Em and C - and watch the numbers climb. Thirty changes a minute is a good start; sixty means the change is ready for any song.

Practise: a progression in G

The exercise is a chord progression, the order of chords in a song: G, C, G, D, then Em, C, G, D. These four chords are the main chords of the key of G, and in that order they could be the verse of a hundred songs. Choose each chord with a click or its number key and strum it, without stopping between them. On your guitar, play the same progression with four down strokes per chord, then with the D DU UDU pattern of lesson 5.