It was a long time ago that I started out with the open C chord. My teacher was a folkie, so she had us banging out I-V two chord progression/songs. That means C & G chords, C is the I chord and G is the V chord. Most notably we worked through “Three Blind Mice” and “Aunt Rhody.”
Here are more recent I-V two chorders:
Jambalaya
Achy Breaky Heart
Paperback Writer
Born In The USA
Since we are talking I-V, you can transpose using the A-E or D-A chords that you already learned with Three Little Birds. You can look for others songs as well.
Hiya. I had the same issue as you and found I could get C perfect but not when changing to C during a song without fumbling.
What I did was practice Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ so much that if I ever hear that song again, I’ll tear my ears off!
Joking aside, it’s a song I know well, has a quick-ish tempo and I treated it like a video game boss battle. Every time I failed, I cursed under my breath and then tried again, and again, and again.
This helped me nail going from Am to C which then helped me with changes from other chords to C.
Your mileage may vary of course, but this is the method that worked for me.
And people wonder why so many people give up learning an instrument…
Even on the ear training exercises I refuse to do those simple, children’s melodies. I work out surf tunes, movies themes and rock tunes with simple riff lines.
It’s taken me 9 months to get anywhere close with the C chord and can just about get this now. Playing songs with the chord in it is the key as it forces you to do the changes.
Same as what’s been suggested previously, I found I got the greatest benefit from playing songs with the c chord in them. Before you know it your fingers will unconsciously be making clean c chords
@Hhbt I’m at exactly the same point as you - module 5. I can nail the C chord nearly every time in chord perfect practice, but when I come to play songs I often miss it and it sounds a bit dull.
I’ll be moving on when I have other parts of the module up to speed and the C chord sounds a bit better during song play.
Everything else has gotten better as I’ve moved along so I’m assuming C will too.
A little longer - I started on the 14th. I keep a record of when I start each module and to date I’ve been about 2 weeks on each one, or a little longer.
So I’ve been working on getting a clean C chord for a good month and half to two months. In a vacuum, I can play it no sweat. I can do 40 or 50 on 1 minute changes. But man on man I haven’t been able to clean my c chord up when playing actual songs. I might hit it clean 25% of the time and maybe even that’s exaggerating.
I’ve actually moved on to grade 2, but continue to work on this C chord with very little progress. I think part of the issue is my fingers are really short. Hands are really small so i’m trying to learn a good way to play them. Just wondering if anyone else had this kind of issue. I’ve considered picking up a short scale guitar to see if that helps… But, I figured I’d ask around here and see if anyone else had a similar issue with C and if it was just a matter of pushing through or maybe a technique thing?
I’m relatively short (5 feet 4inches) and have pretty small hands. I too had issues with the C chord when I was in grade 1. What helped me is focusing all of my song practice with songs with a C chord in it. (I used what’s up by 4 non blondes). I now do clean C chords about 99% of the time and have 0 problems incorporating it in songs. I bet it’s just a matter of persistence and patience.
Make sure that your thumb is in the correct position (on the middle of the back of the neck) and arch your fingers as much as possible to clear the strings, my hands are smaller than my wife’s yet I can still play clean chords on a Classical guitar which has quite a wide neck, just wait until you need to play a G7!!!
