When I’m practicing my changes and I take my 2 & 3 fingers off the strings from the chord I just played, I’m getting kind of a horn like sound. Any idea of what I may be doing wrong? I’m on an electric guitar playing on a clean channel.
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Can you post a video Chris?
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Here is a link to a video. These are slower changes, but on some of the changes you can here an almost horn like sound when I take my fingers of the chord - particularly the D chord. Any other feedback is welcome also.
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Yeah, that’s just the sound of the strings as your fingers are slowly coming off them. It jumps out because the changes are slow and you’re only strumming once. Once your changes become faster and you apply a strumming pattern that sound will all but disappear.
One thing with your technique though - you have a very bent wrist. Maybe try to straighten it out a little. Check out the difference between yours and Justin’s 
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Thanks Lee! Appreciate the feedback. With the bent wrist, I think I ended up there because I was having a hard time keeping my 3rd finger from muting the high E string on the D chord. If I pull my elbow back a bit, I can get my wrist to flatten. Would that be the best way?
Doe these look better?
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Yes I think it looks better. Also check the angle of your forearm versus Justin’s. Yours is angled downwards making it trickier to fret the chord cleanly. Maybe try to raise the neck a little higher so you can replicate the angle of Justin’s forearm a little more?
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Gotcha, I see what you’re saying. I’ll give it a go.
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Raise the neck about 4 or 5 inches from where you are now and your wrist will be much straighter, There is a reason the pros get their necks up and its not for show. It just makes everything easier, even when sitting.
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Thanks! I might need to invest in a strap to make that easier. Feels like it wants to start sliding off my lap.
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Les Paul guitars in a sitting down position have that habit. Get a wide strap with a texture / suede like back, not something with slippy material that will defeat the object - raising the neck by rotating the position of the guitar body and having it stay there.
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Hi, new here and had a question on the practice – maybe I’m not thinking correctly, but how are these two different:
One Minute Changes: A to D
One Minute Changes: D to A
Is it just the starting place? In both cases I’m swapping between one chord and the other? Both are alternating between then, correct? Unless I’m missing the point of what counts as a successful transition?
Sorry if the question is not clear…
–Mike
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Hi @mbonenfant, and welcome! You’re absolutely right, A to D and D to A are the same exercise, except for the starting point. When you move on tho module 2, Justin will introduce a third chord, E. Your practice session will then contain A to D, A to E and D to E. It’s just because you only know 2 chords for now that you get to practice the changes twice.
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Thanks so much for the quick reply, @ladyofthecastle, I’m truly enjoying learning here and just wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing!
Playing along with the songs in the consolidated video is a challenge at the beginning since there is a lot of looking down at the finger form and then back at the video for the strum timing. I get that the strum timing is seemingly paced equally, but I know that can change in the future.
Thanks again for the confirmation!
–Mike
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Yup, they’re are the same changes. You don’t need to practice both 
Welcome to the Community 
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Thanks so much!
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Just wanted to share how I practice this:
I used an open source software called TuxGuitar to assist me. The advantage of using this software for me consisted in that the software plays the chords for me and I can adjust the speed to any beats-per-minute (BPM) I want. I can simply play along and as long as my playing and the TuxGuitar playing sounds the same I know I’m playing the correct chords with the correct speed. Having the built-in metronome indicate the speed also instilled a sense of rhythm into the exercise.
I created a short tablature with two measures - one for D and one for A chord. This was my first self-made tablature, but I figured it out with a little bit of trial and error.
Do note that the numbers in the tablature indicate which fret you play, not which finger you use. The topmost tablature line corresponds to the thinnest string, while the bottom-most line corresponds to the thickest string.
I gradually increased the speed to 120 BPM, since each measure contains 4 quarter note beats, but you only play the chord on the first beat of each measure, the remaining 3/4 quarter note beats per measure you’d use to re-position your fingers for the next chord. If you can keep up with the 120 BPM you’re playing 30 chords per minute.
You can totally start with a slower BPM though → divide your set BPM by 4 to figure out how many chords you play per minute. You can also go beyond 120 BPM on your journey towards 60 played chords per minute.
In TuxGuitar you can set the tempo in the “Composition” drop-down menu → Tempo.
I then enabled the metronome (“Player” drop-down menu → Metronome) and set the player to loop over the two measures (“Player” drop-down menu → “Play Mode” → tick “Play looped” and ensure the loop range is “From the beginning” to “To then end”), meaning after the A chord I get 3 quarter notes of time to re-position my fingers to play the D chord again.
If the chords name and diagram aren’t shown, you can enable that via “View” drop-down menu → “Chord Style” → tick options.
In the view menu I also disabled “Score”, since the tablature sufficed for my practice.
Google Drive link to the tablature file
The instrument set in the tablature is “Clean Electric Guitar”, since I practice with an electric guitar. TuxGuitar supports lots of instruments including acoustic guitars that you can switch the instrument to if you play an acoustic guitar.
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Leave it to a nerd (respectfully, of course) to utilize an obscure piece of open-source software to make this basic exercise all that much more intuitive, interactive, and fun! This post / explanation / recommendation is very much appreciated.
The track sounds great and the metronome / looping functions you specified make it so easy to follow along with. The dynamic chord diagram that displays throughout is awesome too.
I was even inspired to modify a copy of the tablature file you shared and flip the chord order (since I typically start this exercise on “A”.) I also cut down the tempo a bit and changed the instrument to acoustic, as you mentioned at the middle & end of your post, respectively.
Here is the link if anyone wants it.
Much kudos and many thanks - folks like yourself are truly an asset to educational communities such as this one.
Cheers!
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I just started to this course and hit 26 per min. I will try to make it at least 40
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You can do it. Feel the burn
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I strummed a guitar for the first time in my now 66 year old life maybe four weeks ago, and started following the first course here with all the time a retired man whose granddaughter too has now outgrown, has. A week ago I switched to an unplugged electric, just to keep the noise level of unmusical practice down. The way I do the OMC is via a metronome set to the present speed achieved and try to make the change for every beat. When I started this change thing maybe ten days ago, I was at 10, and today I was surprised to see I could keep up with a 26-27 bpm level.
Question: To add on some strumming practice to this, what if I set the metronome to 60 to start, downstrum away to the metronome beat, and do the chord changes for every fourth strum. That would need me to change from A-D-A 15 times a minute and work it up from there by bumping up the metronome, with a target of 120. Makes sense?