Chord Changing

welcome to the forum. great question.
I will answer to open chord changes instead of barre chords.
with Am and C you have one of the easiest changes you can make. and it sounds awesome.
in Am your index finger is already placed perfectly on the C note. that is the second second first fret. the B string.
your middle finger does not have to move either. it's right were it belongs for both Am and C.
the ring finger is the one you move. I sort of slide a bit forward so I can reach the string on the third fret.

you can lett some strings ring out while making the changes. it is a very smooth change and sounds musically good.

As a general rule, you should lift your fingers off the strings and place them each time you change chords.

In reality, we all slide a bit, lift a bit, miss a bit and sort of get it right any way we can. In the early days, it's more important to be able to make the chord change accurately, you can worry about exactly how it sounds later.

A certain amount of string noise goes with the territory as a guitarist. You cannot eliminate it completely because if you spend your life trying to eliminate it you're not spending any time enjoying your guitar.

Welcome to the party. We think you'll like it here.

A :-)

One thing I do when learning a new chord or a chord change that is causing me grief is go through it sloooowly.
Watch your left hand do the change and strum or pick the strings individually to make sure they are all ringing out.
In a few days or a couple of weeks you'll be playing it without thinking about it.

Good luck.

One thing I do when learning a new chord or a chord change that is causing me grief is go through it sloooowly.
Watch your left hand do the change and strum or pick the strings individually to make sure they are all ringing out.
In a few days or a couple of weeks you'll be playing it without thinking about it.

Good luck.

Good advice and in line with the excellent advice offered by Jamie Andreas. (I recommend you read the articles available on the 'net and/or order the book) Look for "No Tempo Practice" Your fingers need many repetitions of the exactly perfect motions in order to burn the pattern in correctly. Do it slowly, do it perfectly and trust that it won't be too long before your fingers "know how" on their own and then you can speed up. The more I do of this extremely slow practice the more magical the whole learning process seems. You have to go slow before you can go fast.

In working thru some more complex pieces I'm finding that I need to go slowly thru some phrases BACKWARDS in order to see what fingering might work best at certain places. In some cases there are several ways to finger certain notes but some of those intermediate fingerings set you up nicely for the next move and some don't.

I've never tried that playing backwards technique. Will try later and see how it goes.

I've never tried that playing backwards technique. Will try later and see how it goes.

I should clarify that I'm not playing the individual notes in reverse order but am making the chord shapes stepping in reverse to see what works best. It's a bit like solving a puzzle or figuring out how something goes together by taking it apart and putting it back together in different ways to see what fits best.

Simplest example might be to choose whether you form an open G chord using your index, middle and ring finger or whether you use middle, ring and pinky. If your following chord is a simple C, the middle,ring, pinky setup works better for the G because you have to shift your hand less. But if you are going to tag an A note remaining in a G chord (1st string, 5th fret) up high then you want your pinky free to make the move so the index, middle, ring form is the place to be.

But the original point was to GO SLOWLY. Form them perfectly, do many repetitions of perfect forms and trust that speed comes when your fingers have truly learned the motions. I have two pieces that I'm still perfecting that took me 6 weeks of very slow repetition 15 minutes per night before I could speed up enough for the tune to be recognizable. Now it's like my fingers have always known what to do (though they still miss sometimes). It's magical!

I've never tried that playing backwards technique. Will try later and see how it goes.

I should clarify that I'm not playing the individual notes in reverse order but am making the chord shapes stepping in reverse to see what works best. It's a bit like solving a puzzle or figuring out how something goes together by taking it apart and putting it back together in different ways to see what fits best.

Simplest example might be to choose whether you form an open G chord using your index, middle and ring finger or whether you use middle, ring and pinky. If your following chord is a simple C, the middle,ring, pinky setup works better for the G because you have to shift your hand less. But if you are going to tag an A note remaining in a G chord (1st string, 5th fret) up high then you want your pinky free to make the move so the index, middle, ring form is the place to be.

But the original point was to GO SLOWLY. Form them perfectly, do many repetitions of perfect forms and trust that speed comes when your fingers have truly learned the motions. I have two pieces that I'm still perfecting that took me 6 weeks of very slow repetition 15 minutes per night before I could speed up enough for the tune to be recognizable. Now it's like my fingers have always known what to do (though they still miss sometimes). It's magical!
Thanks for spelling this out for me, any advice at this stage is much appreciated. It seems like I am second guessing myself on the little stuff. Just when I get really frustrated the next day I make a breakthrough with a chord change or picking pattern. All of those little triumphs have made learning quite fun.

Thanks for spelling this out for me, any advice at this stage is much appreciated. It seems like I am second guessing myself on the little stuff. Just when I get really frustrated the next day I make a breakthrough with a chord change or picking pattern. All of those little triumphs have made learning quite fun.

All those little things add up and the rate at which you get them seems to increase as you build a base of knowlege. Being frustrated is part of the process. Frustration keeps you working on the thing that's bothering you until you figure it out and put it in its place. Hopefully you don't get so frustrated that you forget all the stuff you've accomplished to that point and quit. Don't quit. Playing an instrument is worth the struggle.

I've done enough of working thru these puzzles in the last year that I don't feel it as frustration anymore. It's just a lack of skill, practice or knowlege on my part and I've proven to myself many times that those things can be cured.

Again, Jamie Andreas writes very well on this stuff as a result of teaching and dealing with students' expectations of themselves, their teacher and the pursuit of guitar.

I find the best way to learn chords, and practice changing between them is to:

1) Get your fingers familiar with the chord shape. Say for example with an open Am chord. Hold the pattern as hard as you can, making sure you are pushing down hard on the strings. Hold this for a count of ten. then let go, lift your in a upward direction....shake it all about, then do it again. Do this with both the Am and the C chord for quite a few repititions. Walk away from the guitar for five minutes, then come back and do the same thing. Then try play four bars of each chord interchanging constantly. You can do the same with bar chords. It is the best and simplest method i recon.

Cheers,

Az

I love Justin Sandercoe ( http://www.justinguitar.com ) for his youtube instructional videos. Great guy, knows a ton, explains things well. He advocates "1 minute chord changes", where you basically do as BTIazza suggested. Pick two chords, set a timer for one minute. See how many changes you can do back and forth. Keep practicing and see how many you can do. Write it down even. I bet by the end of the week you'll be surprised at your progress, even if you spend 5-10 minutes a day on it, every day that week.

I need to do this more, myself.