Can I Be Taught To Change Chords?

I'd like to draw your attention to the date of the original posting.
January 2009.

If he hasn't learned how to change chords in 7 months, he really might BE the lost cause.

Start with the F, a relatively easy starter chord.

hmmm 'F Chord' and 'Relatively easy' in the same sentence :!:

Maybe its the easier

{-----1--------------------}
{-------1------------------}
{---------2------------------}
{-----------3------------------}
{-------------X-----------}
{--------------X-----}

or he got Barre chord down quickly

Start with the F, a relatively easy starter chord.

hmmm 'F Chord' and 'Relatively easy' in the same sentence :!:

Edited to include the correct emphasis. :wink:

You can try the one minute chord change exercise. You concentrate on how many chord changes you can
make say G to D in on minute. Do this with all open cowboy chords each day and your speed will improve.
Cowboy chords = :?:

Here's for you KR -

I'd like to draw your attention to the date of the original posting.
January 2009.

If he hasn't learned how to change chords in 7 months, he really might BE the lost cause.

And that was six months after I picked up a guitar and started learning. So now it's been 14 months and I can report that I have made enough progress to keep plugging away. I have some kind of stubborn mental block which refuses to let me quit (even in the face of some pretty compelling evidence otherwise). I'm still bad and can only get through songs (poorly) with the simplest of chord changes.

I have purchased numerous instruction books and have looked at most of the well-known internet instruction sites and I'm on my third instructor. My problem with most of these (including live instructor people) is that they show you how to make a chord. Okay I can do that easily, chord sounds good. Then they show you how to make the next chord. OK check I can do that. Then, alright just change between them and keep practicing, practicing until its automatic. Here is where progress ends. Left out is how to do the complex finger motions needed to do this efficiently. It seems to be assumed that this will happen eventually by itself. Not in my case. For me the most effective resource has been the book Guitar From Scratch by Bruce Emery. It does the best job of explaining how to efficiently make the movements required to change between chords.

Anyway, thanks for all the feedback and encouragement. I'm still lurking around and plucking away.

stubborn mental block which refuses to let me quit

Then, alright just change between them and keep practicing, practicing until its automatic. Here is where progress ends. Left out is how to do the complex finger motions needed to do this efficiently. It seems to be assumed that this will happen eventually by itself.

You're to be applauded for your tenacity. That's 90% of it right there.

I don't know how to solve this issue for you but my suggestion is that you slow way, way, way, way down to teach your fingers to make the changes you're struggling with.

Something like going from E to Am ought to be pretty simple. You form the shape with your fingers in a group. Then to change you lift and move the group of fingers to the new location together. Is that one giving you problems?

Or is it something like going from an E to a D where all the fingers have to move? Spend 20 minutes forming one change. Examine what your fingers have to do. Examine each individually. Then examine the group. Then ever so slowly, lift off, form the new group then press down.
Repeat about 5 times perfectly then put down the guitar and go do something else. Later (an hour or more) do it all again. Slowly, perfectly.
You are trying to teach your fingers the exact, perfect, correct movements. It might take 3 days of evening practice to get one change down. But perfect focused practice will get there.

I have 35th percentile finger dexterity. This means 65% of people have better finger dexterity than I do. But I can form chords with practice and study. You can too. Trust that perfect practice will get there. It really works for me. I can play stuff I NEVER expected I could using this careful, perfect, focused, excruciatingly slow practice.

(I'm a big fan of Jamie Andreas' philosophy of learning guitar.)

How do you find out what dexterity percentile you are in?

How do you find out what dexterity percentile you are in?

Finger dexterity measurement - still somewhat on topic so (long answer follows)

There is an outfit called Johnson O'Connor ( http://www.jocrf.org/ ) which has done aptitute testing since the 1930s.
Their testing can give great insight as to what one would be likely to succeed at in life. My wife and I took these tests about 20 years ago. I was so impressed at the value of the info that I'm paying for both my neices (we don't have kids) to take the tests. Should be valuable info for the rest of their lives as they decide what they will do or not do. It's not cheap. But how much would you pay to know what direction you should go in your life?

Aptitudes are things you are naturally good at.
JOC has a day and a half battery of tests of all kinds which will indicate if you are linear or inductive thinker, have high or low spatial visualization and on and on and on.

The aptitudes they test that are relevent to guitar musicianship are finger dexterity, pitch discrimination, rhythm memory and tune memory.
And maybe you could say the ability to learn new languages would apply as well.

I suppose there are other ways to find out your finger dexterity. That's how I found out mine.

I'm in EXACTLY this situation. Been at it for about 8-9 months and for the life of me can't change chords. The ones I find most difficult is the D > G. Sometimes I just sit and practice the change over and over and over. Yet there seems to be no perceptible increase in speed or accuracy. Sure would be nice to be able to change chords quickly enough to play with someone besides my instructor. I've been told that the best way to learn is to actually get into some jams but it's a catch 22 sitution.
Anyway, nice to know I'm not alone but 8-9 months seems like a terribly long time

Yes you can learn this! You need to go slow. If you have a few single chords down (say a D and a G) then you need to practice transitioning between those chords. Get a metronome and set it at a slow bpm like 90. Keep trying to go from the D to the G at 90 bpm until you get it. Then bump up the bpm to something like 100bpm. Work on the same two chords until you can do it at that tempo smoothly. Then bump it up again. I think you get the idea you need to start with a slow tempo until you can get it then slowly work your way up.

Good luck!