I did the entire grade 1 in about 3.5 months and honestly that was probably a bit quick. First note I will share is don’t worry how long it takes you, for real. Once you get to grade 2, you will be looking at investing at least a full year into both grades 1 and 2 before I personally feel like I myself will be ready to move on to grade 3. Don’t worry about it.
I can’t remember how long it took me to reach that point exactly, but I moved to grade 2 when I could get over at least 50 in a minute on everything. I would say maybe 2.5-3 months to hit where you are looking. Just keep up with the 1-minute changes. They stay around in graded 2, just get used to them and they do make a difference!
My chord changes are fast, more than 100 in minute. Some of them are over 180. But I started to play long time ago. Don’t give up. Your chord changes will become fast.
when Justin says you should be able to play chords from memory before progressing , does that mean playing without looking at all? Similar to typing or is it ok to move on if you know them without help and can do to 30+ chord changes in a minute? Because although I can play over 30 chords during practice, I still need to look sometimes to ensure my fingers are in the correct spot.
Not looking will be a long-term goal. The sooner you try to get there, the better. I did not do that and rely too much on my eyes.
Don’t let it stop you from progressing, but keep it as a long term goal and practice it a bit during your practice sessions. When learning a chord you really do need to look to start the process of figuring out where fingers go.
While I been playing for a while. I reckon I can do that. Time wise to do that. Best I can say is many years.
In the end though. Many of the songs I like to play might have 5-15 changes per minute. Perhaps even through the whole song even.
My guess though is that I just like to play easy songs…
Tim, I can’t answer the question, I forget how long it took me, what the range may have been depending on the specific pair of chords.
What I would say is I’d suggest not asking the question at all. I think whenever we open the door that enters into the room of comparison we run some risks. Specifically if everybody did more faster then you may start to ask yourself unhelpful questions.
Perhaps better is to share your routines and progress. And really if you are applying yourself as per the guidelines and making progress (which it sounds like are both true) then you are progressing at the right speed.
Not only that, sounds ridiculous to me, but when the heck are you gonna make that many changes? Once I hit 40 a minute a drop those OMC’s and concentrate on light touch and what changes I need to work on. 100 and more in a min? Total waste of your time.
I started the mod 1 course a few nights ago so it would be interesting to hear your thoughts as someone with a bit more experience.
As I’m enjoying learning it’s easy to go through the videos 1 or 2 a night then move on. How long did you spend on each individual segment i.e chords? (I’m on the A&D part) The last videos I did was strumming on 1 and the Dance the night away song strumming.
I don’t want to race through them all until I’m good enough but equally don’t want to stay stuck on the same bits and possibly getting frustrated.
I think it took me approx. 6 months to get consistently and cleanly around 50, depending on what chord changes we are talking about. I think I still can’t do change to Dm that fast. I hate that one.
This is a great point I never thought of.
Although it would be nice to do 100+ changes per minute, I don’t think I’ll need that many ever to play a bit of Bob Dylan etc
No, it means you should know the shapes of the chords, which fingers, strings and frets, without looking at the lessons.
You can look at your fingers when you play.
Sorry for the late response, but yes, I had never dealt with the guitar much, I mean I had to go through how to tune it, I broke my strings the first time I ever tried to tune it, the whole 9. I used to be very concerned about how long it should take and even seen some people completeing the entire beginner course in 6 months. Let me tell you, that is insane for a normal person with a job, family, etc. No way you get it done that quick. Just lay back and enjoy the ride.
You won’t notice it or believe it at first, but this guitar thing is literally nothing but time and persistence. You will gradually see yourself getting better at things you used to hate and think you would never get good at. Just trust in the process, it really does work, but it is a slow thing. There isn’t a magic formula, trick or answer, other than just plain old fashioned time.
I think I figured out what he is talking about after rereading it. I believe he is talking about being able to change one chord per bar, to a beat of 180BPM. That would be my guess that would make sense.
If your trying to relate OMC count to how fast you need to change chords in a song, consider this:
At 120bpm, the time between beats is 0.5 seconds. So, when you are changing chords, you need to complete the maneuver within 0.5 second maximum. Remember, you strum, then change, then strum again. In this example, you are strumming once per beat.
This is equivalent to a 120 changes per minute pace!
Luckily, it’s rare that you ever change chords once per beat when playing a real song.
