I am a bit confused about what 1-minute chord changes we are supposed to be practicing. Only one specific chord change is assigned here (Dm to Am), along with whatever one I find the hardest (and Justin suggests Dm to E), but how do I know what chord change is “Hardest for me” if I don’t do 1-minute chord changes of every possible combination (6 chords = 15 possible combinations)?
In other words, should I be practicing A to Em? A to Dm? D to Am? Dm to Em? I think it was implied in an earlier lesson that changes like E to Em, A to Am, and D to Dm are rarely used, so should I even bother practicing them at this stage?
I would suggest to practice any of the chord changes that include Dm based on the songs you are learning for module 4. If any of the chord changes in the previous modules were not quite there yet then you could also include them in your practice routine.
Maybe you’ll experience the same in the next few modules as I did. I think in module 3 and 4, I could have spent an extra week on each. But I didn’t, and it’s ended up being ok because by the time I got to module 7, things were starting to feel a little bit more natural and I wasn’t concentrating on so many new things at one time. And I’m taking about a month in module 7 to let things really sink in, and it’s not feeling so overwhelming. It still feels like my technique is not great, but I think it’s ok to feel that way right now. Some days are better than others.
That’s good to hear that by module 7 you’re starting to get a bit more comfortable. Just starting on module 4, I feel like I have to think a lot about my chord changes and I’m just to the 30-33 changes per minute ability. My mind knows what to do but my fingers just can’t react fast enough yet and I’m hoping the changes…
I’ll be trying to throw in some strumming while playing songs this module and I think I’m going to spend a number of weeks on 4 to make sure I can get halfway feeling comfortable.
that strumming advise is perfect and so timely, I was wondering (struggling with when to move up from Strumming on the 1, to then strumming the song, which you have answered perfectly. I also struggle with getting from 4th strum, to the first with a Chord change to make, so the slowing it down a bit is great - thanks for your information
It will take lots of time practicing in order to master anything. I’ve been playing for over 2 1/2 years and am on Grade 3, and I still have not “mastered” the Dm, although I can now change to it cleanly 80% of the time.
I felt the same as you when I was at Module 4. Your doing GREAT!
Either fingers 1, 2, and 3 or 1, 2, and 4 are fine. If there is any unusual situation that will require you to use ONLY one or the other, you’ll learn it the other way when you need it.
I chose to do fingers 1, 2 and 4. I’m in Grade 3 and have not ever needed to train my hand for fingers 1, 2, and 3 yet.
I still have this nagging doubt when moving on from a module. It feels really wrong! But the more concepts I learn the more I realize it is going to take years to master just about anything on guitar.
Question about one minute changes. I notice in mod 4, it says pick your most difficult. Is there any changes we “shouldn’t” be doing? I mean changes that would never happen in real life. Thanks.
Some are more common than others Raymond but at this point I think there’s value in working on all of them equally at this point. I certainly don’t think there’s any that fall under a “never happen in real life” category.
At advanced levels, maybe. For e.g. I do not see a player switching between power chords on the bottom strings and jazz chords too often.
Having said that, chord changes do become easier. Over time, you start not needing to practice particular changes, you can just do them and learning new chords also become easier, sometimes a new chord does not need practice at all.
Should we aim at mastering around 60 chord changes between all the chords we learn, or are there chords that practically never are played in sequence. F.i. I’ve seen a lot of Am to Em changes and C to G in the songs I’ve learned so far,but practically never a E to Em change. Should this influence our practice routine?
Hello Thomas, and a warm welcome to the community .
The short answer to your question is ‘no’ - you don’t have to practice all possible chord changes. Focus on those you need for the songs you are playing. C to G is very common - so working on this would definitely make sense. When selecting songs, I would try to incorporate all chords you’ve learned so far.
I hope, this helps a bit .
I wish you lots of fun along your guitar journey .
Thanks for your friendly reply, Nicole!
I’ll follow your suggestions, and maybe I’ll try Justins music theory course to learn which chord progressions are common and which aren’t.
It’s so great to see how even 20 minutes a day can lead to quite fast improvements
Just starting module 4 I had to slow down all the songs quite a bit and now 2 weeks later I can play lots of them in full tempo WITH the old faithful strumming pattern. Especially “If you had my Love” by Jennifer Lopez is a great song for this module! Lots of chord changes but always the same pattern and very chill to play.
I also went back to a few of the Module 2 songs so I don’t forget the normal A and D chords and I was also able to play a few songs on full tempo now.
I threw out the Sunshine of your Love Riff quite fast because I don’t really like it. I had absolutely no problems playing it so I just started playing other stuff haha
Now I’m practicing the Godfather theme with fingerstyle instead and it is GREAT.
Like Justin always says in his videos, important thing is to keep it fun!
The chords you have here are major and minor versions of A, D and E.
You can, for now, skip past the major → minor changes of the same chord root (so no A → Am for instance).
A good selection will include:
All major chords:
A → E → A …
A → D → A …
D → E → D …
All minor chords:
Am → Em → Am …
Am → Dm → Am …
Dm → Em → Dm …
Mixed major and minor chords:
Am → E → Am …
Am → D → Am …
Dm → E → Dm …
Dm → A → Dm …
Em → A → Em …
Em → D → Em …
It’s good to take some time, learn songs, feel comfortable and move on as you yourself recognise development and progress.
Do you mean fingering it with 1, 3 and 4? Not using finger 2 at all?
I would strongly advise against that as you’ll be forming a bad habit that will be hard to break.
Fingers 1, 2, 3 or fingers 1, 2, 4 are the options to choose from.
Any chord change can and does happen in real life songs etc. but less common at this stage (so something to not worry about yet) is major to minor of the same root. See my list in this same reply.
.
.
.