ok.. i think i am the only one who doesn't understand chords... i understand the G C & D - i can't do them, but i understand . . i think - but all the things that say major or something after, how are you to remember all of them? how does it make sense? i am so confused.
aerodynamically the bumblebee is unable to fly.. the bumblee bee does not know this so he goes on flying..
You memorize them and play them over and over until muscle memory takes over and you don't have to think to play them because your fingers and hands work automatically. If you ever learned to type, you went through a similar process. Or driving a car. Complex actions (forming a chord while keeping a rhythm) will eventually become reflex. You do, however, only arrive at this stage after you played the chords a kajillion times.
Hope that helps!
Well we all shine on--like the moon and the stars and the sun.
-- John Lennon
I agree. to start you learn how to put your fingers on the right strings to form the chord. then you learn how to strum the strings to sound the chord.
learning the names might seem daunting at first. by playing them over and over, working on changing from one chord to another, teaches your hand (muscles) how it's done. it remembers faster than your brain (ok mine).
it becomes very automatic eventually.
knowing the chords names is important. just as knowing the names of your strings. then you will start to learn fret postion names.
it is all very logical after awhile.
Hey,
Musenfreund is right on target. I've been playing for about 6 months, and I've got 17 open position chords that I can get to pretty quickly (plus a few barre chords since last week). I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I've gone through my list.
Maybe concentrate on just the major chords 1st (I'd skip B major for a little while). In a few weeks or months, move on to the minor chords, 1 at a time.
Just my 2 cents...
M
I like Musen's analogy to learning to type. It is very similar to that. When you start learing to type, it's all you can do to remember which finger hits what letters. As you progress, that becomes second nature. After a while, you start to even not think about letters, but words. I've been typing so much for so long that I am even to the phrases and sentences phase. I think of several words together and they just appear on screen, automagically. It's all in the repetition.
