Best Chord Changes To Work On

Too many chord changes to practice? Focus on those ones!


View the full lesson at Best Chord Changes To Work On | JustinGuitar

This helped me start thinking about more effective practice routines instead of just practicing all the chords and my timing over and over, great lesson Justin

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To my mind the #1 chord changes to work on are the G-C-F trinity. C to F, G to F, G to C, etc.

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@jsmacdonald
Welcome to the community Jeff.
If your going to work on 3 chord changes together I’d suggest
common 1 4 5 progressions
C F G, G C D, A D E, D G A, Am, Dm, Em,

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In learn more, in the list of chord changes. for example A ,C. Does that mean i only have to practice A to C or do i have to practice both A to C AND C to A

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Hello @Wannabecoolguy welcome to the Community.
If you change from A to C, to keep that going you are going to change back from C to A.
It is cyclical practice.

Cheers :smiley:
| Richard_close2u | JustinGuitar Official Guide & Moderator

Just a little heads up, it says Beginner Song “Agg” instead of app under the Optimize Your Time section. :slight_smile:

MOD NOTE

@Forsythe
Fixed now. Thanks for the heads up.
Cheers :smiley:
| Richard_close2u | JustinGuitar Official Guide

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Great exercise! Chord changes are commutative (A <-> C is the same as C <-> A), so there are only 28 possible ones for the 8 chords I think- the three missing from the list are
A<->Am, D<->Dm, E<->Em

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Thanks for the video!
Minor note: I think there 28 possible chord changes, not 56.
and yep as a math/engineery type so I definitely get the urge to get all to 60 :), but I should stop shying away from the songs :stuck_out_tongue:

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@perha Welcome to the Community, Paro.

That is wise. And when targeting changes for practice it is good to focus on those changes that are common in songs, such as changes between A, D, and E, plus G, Am, C, D, and Em. There’s a good reason why those chords are used together in songs that you’ll understand later, not important now.

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I definitely like taking the “as-needed” approach to these changes. I never tried to “catch em all”.

If you’re trying to play a song and some of the changes are not fast enough, put 'em in your routine. Once you’re consistently pinging >60 changes per minute in a OMC, switch it to PFC. Once it’s consistently good in whatever songs you’re trying to play, drop it from the routine. Rinse repeat.

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With respect to how many 2 chord combinations there are out of the 8 basic ones, the formula is 8 choose two sometimes written as 2C8. Which comes out to 8!/(8-2)!/2!. This comes out to 28 different combinations. It’s funny I just calculated this today then I saw Justin mention it on the lesson I was watching today.

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