One Minute Changes Exercise

Try this: fret a D chord stum it, lift your finger off the fret board but don’t move your hand. Place the finger back down. When that becomes easy do the same thing but this time remove your hand then play the D chord again. Placing all finger down at once. When that is easy do the same thing, remove your hand and touch your knee play D chord again. It’s like doing a OMC but with chord. After a few days of practicing this you’ll be placing all 3 finger down at once without thinking about it.

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Thanks. i’ll be trying this in my next session :pray:

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You can use this exercise for any chord your not happy with or having trouble learning

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Hello all,

Thank you to Justin and his team for providing us with this learning platform.

It is impressive, much more so than my ability to change chords from A to D, or from D to A, that’s for sure :slight_smile:

So… like many of you, I am a complete beginner and while working on OMC, I noticed that if I used Justin’s recommended fingering for the A chord, I could simply slide finger 3 from the 2nd to the 3rd fret – i.e without lifting it – when moving from A to D.

It makes the A to D change a bit easier, but I’m worried this might be a bad habit to pick up.

So, to the more experienced players maybe, when doing chord changes:

is it OK to just slide your fingers when possible, no lifting or is it better to get into the habit of always lifting the fingers from starting chord to destination chord?

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It’s perfectly fine to use anchor fingers wherever you can. Justin especially recommends this when moving between the beginner chords. The goal is to get your chord changes fast enough so you can play songs, so use all the tricks you can.

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Hi Jeff,

Right! I’m not quite at 60 changes per minute yet and when I say not quite, well, you know… :slight_smile:

It’s a work in progress.

Thank you for taking the time to reply!

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Sorry if this has been asked before, didn’t see it on the search. My question is … changing from say A to D do you count on both chords or only on D - ie. would you count A-D-A as two or one?

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Hi Mark. Justin says, before you move on to the next lesson, try to get up to 30 chord changes per minute between D and A chords, and so you have to count both chords, otherwise it’s unrealistic to achieve this goal. Have fun!

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You don’t count the initial position, so only 2 changes in the A-D-A example (A to D, and D to A). But in one minute, it does not matter if it’s more or less 1, you are looking at your progression.

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Just started the course. My first progression between A-D 18, A-E 15, and E-D 14. Looking forward to practicing more and improving the numbers. I’m impressed I could do even these many. I thought I might just get 3-5 in a minute :slight_smile:

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Hello and welcome to the community :hugs:.
Congratulations on your first chord changes :clap:. Keep on doing the one minute changes and you’ll definitely progress. Wish you lots of fun along the way :star_struck:.

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For counting the number of cord changes per minute. Is each chord counted such as: a = 1, D = 2, A = 3, D = 4, etc. Or is it: A then D = 1, A then D = 2, A = then D = 3, etc.

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Hi Christopher @CJPCNY, welcome to the community!
My thought is that we are counting changes, so your second example is correct. I love your question, because I caught myself counting the first way - counting chords played rather than changes - until just a couple of months ago! Glad I’m not alone. :slight_smile:

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Hi Christopher @CJPCNY , it’s actually neither of those. You should count changes, but you should count every change, like this: A to D = 1, back to A = 2, back to D = 3 etc.

But, well, if you count chords (your first example), you will only have one too many in your count - nothing to fret about :wink:

Have fun!

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I think you are correct. I’ve been using my second example and wondering if I was too slow but what you said makes more sense .

Thank you

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@CJPCNY

Hello Christopher. Welcome to JustinGuitar and the Community.

Watch the video lesson from 3min 14 on. Justin makes it clear that no matter which method you choose to count, the aim of the exercise remains the same and you can write down and measure your progress.
He offers two options of counting.

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I got 26 On my first try with no experience

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nice dude keep it up

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Are the strings supposed to light up when you are practicing one minute challenge A&D?

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I started Justin’s lesson back in December. I am in grade module 4. I use his suggested practice and added the minute chord changes. All of them. I am in the middle twenties on most of the minute
changes. My question is how long did it take others to start hitting 30-40 changes per minute?

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