The C Chord

[CarlosAP]

Same thing happens to me! I can do almost 60 chord changes per minute from C to G and Am but when it comes to play a song my fingers don’t go where they’re supposed to. I know this one it’s gonna take longer than the other ones and that’s ok

[Yossarian7]

I am curious, Justin suggests in playing Dm chord to use 4th finger instead of the 3rd, why not do the same for the C chord?
Personaly, I started playing Dm chord with the 4th finger but when started playing the C chord, I switched to the 3rd finger because now it makes it easier after I learned C chord.

[Richard_close2u]

Hello @Yossarian7 and welcome to the community.

For C you need to only think about using 3rd finger - as a long term investment it will reap rewards.

For Dm you can use either and in the long-term you will find occasions when you will be glad if you learned both.

Dmin with 3rd finger enables playing Dsus4.
Dmin with 3rd finger allows changing the bass note with 3rd finger.
This is all to come later in the course.

I hope that helps.

Cheers

| Richard | JustinGuitar Approved Teacher, Official Guide & Moderator

[Lorzion]

So, I’ve got little hands. I absolutely cannot mute the low E string with my ring finger without also muting the high e string with the chubby part at the start of the digit. I tend to wrap my thumb around the neck to mute strings (D and A chords for instance)… Is that bad? If it works it works right? C is a hard chord to form the shape with my sized hands anyway, I have to be halfway up the fret with my ring finger for the same above reason

Correction after tinkering with it some more. I can get the chord to ring out correctly 2 ways. Way 1 is what i described above using my thumb to mute low E. The other way is if my thumb is on the back of the neck and kicking my entire hand and arm out far away to give myself more room… but thats a completely different position than how I play any other chord and will make fast changes nearly impossible, and I still cant mute low E with my ring finger and play the note on A without buzz

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

@Lorzion

The other way is if my thumb is on the back of the neck and kicking my entire hand and arm out far away to give myself more room…

This.

And it will likely give you enough room to mute the E with the tip of your ring finger, not much contact is needed. Then practice targeting the 5 strings that make up the chord, slow and deliberate. Same with the D chord target just the 4 strings. Slow controlled. After time you will instinctively miss the unneeded strings. But it takes time and practice.
Keep you thumb at the back of the neck until you can do the above. Build the foundation basics first before worrying about thumb muting. That will come all in good time.

[Tbushell]

@Lorzion

. I tend to wrap my thumb around the neck to mute strings (D and A chords for instance)… Is that bad?

I asked a similar question a while back…

Muting vs Missing strings - question for more experienced players

In the early beginner lessons, Justin talks about strumming so you miss the thicker strings when playing D and A chords. He later introduces muting with the ring finger for the C chord. But I don’t recall him talking about thumb muting much in the early lessons…if at all. I struggled with this “miss the strings” technique…it really messed up my strumming. I could never get a good solid strum while also avoiding the E and A strings. Things started going much better when I learned to thumb mu…

From reading the replies, I concluded there is no “right” answer. You have to figure out what works for you at your current level of development.

To sort of quote Justin:

If it sounds good, and feels good, it is good.

[TruongLGuitar]

whenever I play the C chord my pinky finger keep raising up, should I try to keep it down while changing chords?

[SgtColon]

Hello Truong and welcome to our community

To answer your question, yes. You will be needing to use your little finger for embellishments a little further into your guitar adventure.

Why don’t you pop on over to here and introduce yourself.

[mdrainwater]

I’m just finishing up grade 1 and starting grade 2. I am really struggling with changing to the C chord. I have been using one minute changes and now perfect changes. I hit around 30 but just seem to be stuck there. Should I just keep up the one minute changes or is there something else that would help? Can,t seem to get my fingers to move at the same time like in air changes Any helpful hints please. Thanks

[stitch]

@mdrainwater welcome to the forum Michael.
Try this exercise. Fret the C chord strum it then lift your fingers off the strings but don’t move your hand, re fret the chord again. Once you can play the C chord repeatedly landing all fingers do the same thing but remove your hand from the fret board the repeat the chord. Kind of like doing the one minute changes but with just one chord.
When that becomes easy fret the chord the remove your hand and touch your knee repeat chord. Try forming the chord in the air so you can place all your fingers down at once.

[mdrainwater]

Thanks. Will give it a try

[CATMAN62]

Michael,
I have used Rick’s @stitch suggested technique & it definitely does help! I found it a bit frustrating at first because for me it took quite a while for my fingers to comply with what my brain was telling them!!! After a few days though, the C chord changes became much more natural… oh, don’t stop your OMC’s - just use both in conjunction with each other!
Good Luck!!!

Tod

[Richard_close2u]

@mdrainwater
Hello Michael, congratulations on your grade 1 progress and welcome to the community.

Given your issues I would say to spend a little more time consolidating Grade 1 before you move on, especially learn and play songs that contain C major and work on that chord formation and progressions changing to and from it.

To improve the C chord formation, try this:

• Hold your fingers near to but not touching the strings.
• Touch the fingers where the chord is but do not press.
• Once you have all three touching at the correct place then press them down.
• Do not strum - this is a fretting hand exercise only.
• Release the pressure after a few seconds but keep touching the strings.
• Then move your hand away from the strings by a small amount. All fingers away.
• Repeat the process.

Then, to improve changes to and from the C major chord and other commonly grouped chords, repeat the above process with one alteration. After the final step of lifting all fingers away, the next cycle would be over the chord that you are changing to. Once that chord has been done and fingers are lifted away, go back to the first chord of the pair.

Wash, rinse, repeat.
Make this exercise last about five minutes.

1 minute - C alone
1 minute - C & Am
1 minute - C and G
1 minute - C and D
1 minute - C alone

Practice daily and within a week you will be smashing it!
Cheers
Richard

[heckler]

Once you start nailing this exercise almost 100% of the time, I found it helpful to do a variation where I’d fret the chord, strum, then remove the fretting hand and tap my lap, then fret again.

After a while moved to doing it just by feel, without looking at the scale. This helped me with some tricky chords on earlier stages.

[scuba561]

So, like many others, I have struggled a bit with the C chord. My chord perfets are pretty good. My one minuet changes are also pretty good (low 50s to high 60s). Where I have been struggling is when playing along with a song in the song app. My changes are NOT smooth.

So I had this thought and wanted some feedback on the idea. The idea is to work on learning new strum patterns and chord changes at the same time. For 15 - 20 minuets at a time I will pick a strum pattern and switch between C and A…Then C and D…etc. Every 5 minuets or so I change the strum pattern.

I assume if I keep doing this for several days, the changes will eventually get smooth(er). Right?

Thanks everyone,

Mike

[theoldman66]

Justin teaches that practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. It’s probably not the best idea to divide your focus by practicing 2 things at once, in case mistakes creep in. Better to have one strum pattern nailed, and then use that for practicing chord changes. This lesson from grade 3 explains why you shouldn’t try to rush your learning (It’s not a complicated technique lesson, and it ought to be in module 1)

[KimR]

Just here to say that @Richard_close2u method really works. Thanks Richard! I was struggling with C to G changes last year as I was still putting my anchor finger down first which was slowing me down. Doing this exercise daily for a few weeks and then slowing down playing songs when I got to this change to force myself to air change instead of putting my anchor finger down first when forming C solved the problem.

[mdrainwater]

Thanks for such a detailed plan. I’m going to work on this and will let you know. Appreciate it very much

[Tbushell]

@scuba561

For 15 - 20 minuets at a time I will pick a strum pattern and switch between C and A…Then C and D…etc. Every 5 minuets or so I change the strum pattern.

15 - 20 minutes seems too long for this sort of exercise. I think it risks boredom at best. At worst - injury, from repetitive strain.

Also, as someone already mentioned, it attempts to teach two things at once.

Better to break things down into five minute chunks where you only work on one thing at a time, I think.

[moose408]

I practice switching between two chords (D to C is my nemesis) without strumming and I use a metronome. If I can do it for a minute without errors I speed up the metronome, if I make an error I slow down the metronome.

Been doing this for a week now and there is a noticeable improvement when I then go to play a song.

The other thing that really helped me was to spend 1 min 3 or 4 times a day just practicing the C chord without strumming. Start off just hovering over the strings, then resting on the strings, then pressing and releasing. Rinse repeat. Then moving to put my hand on my knee between moving the chord and finally chord perfect exercise