Let’s say you have a song which contains a change from Am to F and the pattern played is D D D DU, so you have an upstroke just before changing to F. Often, especially with higher BPM, that upstroke would be played on open strings. Are you able to play that upstroke cleanly? I spent some time practising changes to/from F, and with all downstrokes I should be able to get the change fine let’s say at 70-75 BPM. But if I add this upstroke then my index finger that it trying to move from its Am chord position to bar the first fret will inavitably mute the strings, since it is not in quick enough to press the strings hard enough yet at that time. And postponing movement will mean that it won’t be properly placed on the beat 1.
I use an old and bit battered acoustic guitar (although it was adjusted by a luthier, so it is not all terrible). I need to dig out my electric guitar to see how that works there.
I guess it may be just another case of ‘practice enough and/or come back later, you will surprised that things that were hard/impossible before now seems to come together’ - I’ve seen that enough times in the past. But I’m wondering if there are some tricks that could be employed here. One that came to my mind is to play Am with fingers 2-4 to have the index finger more ready to quickly bar the first fret. I tried to briefly, but in general I found that learning another fingering so it works more or less smoothly always requires some tangible effort, so not sure yet if that could work.
Obviously if one is changing from some other chords to F than finding some alternative fingering may not be that easy.
Hey Marcin - I think the ‘trick’ (if there is one) is to form the chord in the air during the upstroke and then land it cleanly for the downstroke. You want to place the chord down in one movement. As you rightly point out, it’s going to take time and practice, but you’ll get there.
I did a quick recording of Am to F using your strumming pattern and a clean upstrum of open strings here. You can see I form the chords in the air and drop onto the strings just in time.
What is the purpose for what you are trying achieve? Is it an exercise in quick chord changes, timing etc? Just curious.
Regardless, one way to achieve what you want fairly simply is to play the chords as triads in the same position.
A triad shift from Am to F is minimal, give they share 2 of their 3 notes ( A and C).
So you are simply just moving from the E to F on the D string on the change.
This is a good idea. There is always more than one method you can use. There is no right or wrong way to do things. Rhythm is king, so as long as you keep the strumming pattern going it will sound ok. Even if you have a muted upstroke it won’t sound bad, may even sound good so long as you keep the rhythm going.
True which is why there will be more than one solution to the problem. Learning guitar is a problem solving exercise and there will be different solutions depending on the circumstance.
This is an important point. You want the first strum on F to be on beat 1. Do whatever it takes to ensure that happens, even if that means fluffing the last strum on the previous chord.
Well, I just started to learn some song that have F and Bm. When I moved from a simple on-beat strumming to something more involved I noticed that trying to bar the fret with the 1st finger interferes with the upstroke after 4.
I will have a look at triads, thanks. I’m still somewhere in the beginner part of the courses, and I can see that Justin introduces triads in the intermediate part. But no harm in looking ahead and trying to incorporate some new things. My learning is a bit haphazard anyway.
Thanks for your demonstration, yes, that sounds good, so it is clearly possible In general I aim for air changes, but I guess it is just too early to me / not enough practice yet to get that working smoothly for F, and especially for Bm. That got me thinking if there is some ‘workaround’ so I can continue learning a song that uses both these chords. I guess - besides trying some different fingering - I could try to use some alternatives for the F chord presented in https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/f-chord-cheats-b2-902. For Bm not sure - this chord is even more awkward to form, event if it has the same shape as F.
Yes, I would agree that Bm for some reason seems tougher than F. You need to be more accurate with the barre so you mute the bottom E, that doesn’t help! There are fewer work arounds for Bm too.
When it comes to F, I actually rarely play a full barre these days. Like Shane, I’m a big fan of triads - If I’m playing an F at the cowboy chord end, then F I’ll very often play a simple 135 triad that is effectively the FM7 chord with the high e muted too.
In general I aim for air changes, but I guess it is just too early to me / not enough practice yet to get that working smoothly for F, and especially for Bm. That got me thinking if there is some ‘workaround’ so I can continue learning a song that uses both these chords. I guess - besides trying some different fingering - I could try to use some alternatives for the F chord presented in