One Minute Changes Exercise

@MulchyD Good on ya. That is exactly the reason for recording your scores - to track your progress and give a tangible sense of improvement.
Cheers :smiley:
| Richard_close2u | Community Moderator, Official Guide, JustinGuitar Approved Teacher

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I could do > 30 changes from the beginning (which was only a week ago), now I usually get about 45. The A chords are quite okay, most of them are really clean. But I’d say that of the D chords, not one is clean.

Yesterday I realized that my hand and finger positions were pretty bad. I tried to get to a “more correct” position which makes the D chord even harder for me. So, still the D chords in the OMC are really all not clean. And I’m not really sure what to do about it.
If I really take my time and check after each placed finger that all strings still sound clean, then after 10 seconds I have (most of the time) a clean D chord. But this doesn’t really work out in the OMC exercise. :joy:

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When I’m trying to learn a new chord change, I do both a ‘perfect chord’ switch very slowly a bunch of times. Then I do the OMC exercise as fast as I can go. If I keep doing that everyday, eventually my OMCs get cleaner sounding. I think part of it is the muscle dexterity that you’re building up over time. Keep at it. You’ll get there!

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Hi and thanks for your reply!

How long does that usually take for you? I already see me sitting here in half a year and still trying to get that D chord clean.
I mean, there are 12 tones. If I only think about major, minor, 7, and m7 chords, that’s 48 different chords. So that’s going to take me 20, 30 or 40 years? I’m pretty sure that I would quit way earlier. I just can’t remember anything from 35 years of playing piano that has been remotely as frustrating (and painful) as this first week of guitar playing.

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It takes awhile for your fingers to start figuring out where to really be on the strings and in the frets. Some chords will be MUCH easier than others. Don’t despair. It took me a couple of months at the beginning to really feel like I was making progress. In the meantime, don’t get stuck in a place. Keep the D-A OMC in your practice routine and move along with the program. As you get better with other stuff, your confidence and enjoyment will grow. and you are WAY ahead musically if you can already play piano! I too am a keyboard player working to learn guitar. Getting my fingers to behave on the neck is really hard. Right hand technique has been easier for me.

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I actually was planning not to move along with the program as long as the D-A stuff does not work fine. I’m really not sure what’s the right approach. And I’m not sure if I really have the patience if this takes a couple of months.

I even feel like my piano experience is severely hindering me rather than helping me. So many aspects and concepts with the guitar are so fundamentally different that I feel I would be better off if I didn’t know anything about playing piano.

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that sounds a bit defeatist to me. There must be a reason you picked up the guitar. And do keep moving on with the program. Don’t let one little thing get in the way of making progress. Believe me, you’ll eventually master the D-A thing if you keep practicing a variety of things on the guitar. Find stuff you ENJOY doing on the guitar. That will keep you motivated to keep working on the hard stuff

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Well, one of my first revelations was that I needed to move only one finger to turn an Am into C in open position. At that time I had no idea about the theory behind it, but it was a really cool feeling. Same with lifting off a finger to get an Em.

So you won’t need to memorize each and every chord imaginable on the guitar. As Justin explains in his music theory course (and probably elsewhere, too), one of his aims is to teach us how to modify a smallish number of chords/grips in order to expand our musical palette and understanding. The “3749 useful chords” approach is really not his thing. So don’t worry about the number of chords as during your progress you will discover the structure of the fretboard and the relationship between various chord types and shapes.

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I really didn’t pick up the guitar with a concrete big goal in mind. I guess I had thought about it for quite a while during Covid: just learning to play a new instrument. Just playing it, nothing special.
Why the guitar? Good question. I guess I thought that it is quite a “common” instrument. And that you can play it alone and it’s just useful for accompanying songs.

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@Klimperer42 There’s always going to be hurdles to to get past. You must have had some learning to play piano.
When I was doing OMC for G and C I could do it at 60+ no problem but when I tried to play a song I figured out that I could go from G to C fast but not from C to G fast. I basically had to relearn the G cord and how I put my fingers down. Maybe just keep trying different things with the positions of your fingers, wrist, the guitar neck ect.

I also think being able to play piano will be a great advantage for you down the road.

Dave

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Yes, of course there were hurdles when I learned to play the piano. For sure. But as a lot of it was > 30 years ago, I probably don’t remember them that well. But I can’t really recall that there were ever this kind of hurdles: That something that is (musically) very simple (like one single major chord) just doesn’t work at all in so many aspects. It feels like there are only unmanageable hurdles in this new guitar world, no matter where I look.

My problem is that first of all I don’t really know what I am doing wrong. And even if I knew, I wouldn’t know how to do it better. So I don’t know what different things I should try.
I know from experience that it is pretty easy to teach yourself “wrong” things. And that it is much harder to “unlearn” those things again. That’s why I wanted to learn everything “right” from the beginning. But there also seems to be a lot of differing opinions on what is “right” in the first place. That doesn’t make it easier :joy:

It’s similar on the piano. There are “good” finger positions and “bad” finger positions. And they are commonly considered “good” and “bad” for good reasons. I assume it is the same with the hand and finger positions on the guitar.

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maybe make a quick video or a few pictures so someone can help you out with what you are doing

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I have a colleague at work who started playing classical guitar as a child about 15 years ago. I‘ve already sent her some pictures and she replied with a video and some tips via WhatsApp. That was already really helpful.
She also agreed to a little session in person so that she can have a look at what I‘m doing and give me some more tips.

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hi strumhum, i’m only a few months in myself, but from my experience, i’d say to stick to the modules and lessons structure, if you just skip to the next cord you’ll end up in the next lessons and modules, you’ll miss important and also some fun stuff, there are a few riff’s which make a change to chord strumming etc, i followed Justins advice to move to the next lesson when i was getting 30+ changes, but i’d not jump straight away, i stay in the lessons till the changes were cleaner too, it really helps when learning the songs, yes it’s slowed me down but i’m in no hurry.

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Hello all,
this is a daft question and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be disappointed with the answer! :laughing:
I’ve been learning (3rd time) for a month. It’s slow progress, but it IS progress, something that never happened previously! So, on the 1 minute chord changes (A-D and D-A) in my case, I’m getting around 12. But… am I counting correctly? Is an A and a D counted as one (which is what I’ve been doing) or is that two??? Please say it’s two! :laughing::+1::joy:
Whatever it is, I love my guitar and we have fun :notes::notes:
Cheers,
Toni (and Ziggy, the little Tanglewood)

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Hi Toni.
In the OMC video lesson at 3 minutes Justin sliced in a clip of Nitsuj doing A and D chords to explain the counting process
Count every chord, including the first one played.
:slight_smile:

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Woohoo! I’ve doubled my score in the time it took me to read your message! :+1::guitar:
That’s great, thank you, I couldn’t find instructions, but as yet I’ve not looked at Nitsuj, I shall do.
It means I might move to module 2 this side of Christmas!
:relaxed:

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:grinning: I remember this used to be a regular question in the old forum

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Yet another example of why losing Disqus and the old Forum while both a shame, the content was always going to replicated here, as the same questions will be asked again and again.

So to @TangleJangle Toni this has never been a silly question and it won’t be the next time someone asks. So a huge congrats on doubling your score, now you need to work on getting from 24 to 48 :wink: but you will, just take your time.

:sunglasses:

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Just watched Nitsuj for the first time and that has really inspired me, really helpful to see him at my sort of stage (I did say sort of!!). Needing to look at both hands etc etc. Can’t wait to do my practice later :notes::star_struck:

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