I have started to play. Understand open chords and simple rhythms. I do not understand chord sheet music. Trying to understand chord changes within a song. I am currently in the Nashville, Tennessee area and am looking for other beginning players to jam with. US Military Veteran!
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Wekcome to the forum Stephen
Good to have you on board Stephen. You find a lot of support here.
Ah, home of the legendary Sun records! 
Welcome to our Community!
Welcome to the community, Stephen.
Hi Stephen,
Welcome here and I wish you a lot of fun 
Greetings,Rogier
Hello Stephen, and a warm welcome to the community 
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Welcome Stephen,
Wishing you good luck with your journey and your fun 
A
Stephen, welcome to the community forum. You live in a good town to find guitarist. When I visited there were buskers playing guitar in the airport and a guitarist playing the airport coffee shop. You might want to check out the East Nashville Guitar Club that I found looking online. Have fun learning songs and learning how to read a chord song sheets. Since you know open chords and simple rhythms, you start at beginning for reading chord charts or song sheets. You could try Justin’s app which has animated chord charts with lyrics that tell you when to strum. You can listed to Justin’s beginning song lessons where he shows where to strum in a song. If you look at the community forum discussion for the Grade 1 lessons you will find that your question is very common and there is a lot of help with that.
Sun Records started in Memphis, Tennessee. 3.5 hours west of Nashville.
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I visited historic RCA Studio B when I visited Nashville, where later Elvis songs were recorded and the Everly Brothers. There is also a great historic guitar museum at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Welcome! Sounds like you’re in a strong starting place with some open chords and a sense of rhythm under your belt already.
In addition to the song app, Justin’s video lessons are also a great watch - they’ll break songs down into sections as he explains how to play each bit. It’s can be super helpful to be able to see him playing as he shows the chord grips.
i have tried video lessons. they’re just not the same as immediate correction and feedback are. i am using a YouTube instructor to watch. Chord changes in tempo and trying to match the song location is my biggest issues. When i play from my head, no sheet, I’m almost good. This is the biggest frustration for me.
Hello Stephen and welcome to our community. 
Hey there, since you’re in the US and a Veteran, I want to plug “Guitars4Vets” it’s an organization that helps vets learn guitar. It’s primarily for vets with PTSD - but if you contact them they may be able to set you up with some veterans in your area that are also learning guitar
i graduated from that program in june. that is how i became involved with guitars. it helps a lot when i need to lower my agitations.
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Hi Stephen welcome. What you’re describing for me is that you can’t follow the lyrics while at the same time strumming and making the chord changes. From my experience and what other fellow Justin students have written about, it requires separate things and later combine them because if not it’s too much. First practice the strumming, when the strumming is fluid, you practice the chord sequence, you can read it initially from lyrics with the chords and later memorize it. I sometimes I’ve practiced the chord sequence by itself. Here is important that for many songs the change occurs in the first beat of a bar but there’s no fixed rule about that. Hear the song counting beats and see where the changes are happening. After you have the strumming and chord sequence doing well even at slower speed than the record you can progressively increase the speed till you can play along the record or sing along if you want. With the app you can play the song at whatever speed you feel comfortable with. Have fun.
I’m a grad of Guitars4Vets
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