CHords

I'm hardly qualified to give advice in this arena, but I found out what worked for me was practicing songs that required a good deal of chord changes.

Play a few Bob Dylan songs.

I just started working with a teacher that mainly plays jazz and in the last two weeks have received two pages of chords. He gives me chord progressions out of a jazz standards fake book to practice the chords. There are so many voicings it sounds like a piano, its cool and really helping my rhythm playing.

I just started working with a teacher that mainly plays jazz and in the last two weeks have received two pages of chords. He gives me chord progressions out of a jazz standards fake book to practice the chords. There are so many voicings it sounds like a piano, its cool and really helping my rhythm playing.
could ya tab a few for me?

Looks like like you've already been given some excellent suggestions. But just thought I'd mention a couple of things that have undoubtably worked out very well for me. NOTE: The following tip works extremely well for me is because I have slightly shorter than usual fingers. If you're one of those lucky people gifted with having long fingers, then disregard this tip altogether. :wink:

First, just before you begin practicing your chords, try doing some hand/finger stretching exersizes to warm up your chord hand by stretching its ligaments (hand yoga?). Over time, you will increase your ability to do chords that are hard to do because they stretch your hand too much. You can just make up your own ligament stretching exersizes if you like. Pretty much anything that will stretch the ligaments in you chord hand moderately should work fine. I say moderately because you sure don't want to actually damage the ligaments in your hand. Here's what I've been doing that works excellent for me:

I start by spreading the fingers of my chord hand apart ALMOST as hard as I can and then I hold it that way for about 20 seconds. Then I relax my hand for ten seconds, then repeat the stretch again for another 20 seconds. I cycle through this excersize about five times in order to stretch horizontally the finger ligaments. Then, I vertically stretch each finger ligament by slightly bending back each finger (20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, etc.). Again, do these just before you begin practicing your chords. After several days, you'll notice that those akward stretch chords are much easier to do now. WARNING: This is one area where the "No pain, no gain" advise does NOT apply. If, after trying this once, you notice that your fingers hurt more than usual after practicing, try lowering the number of times you cycle through each horizontal/vertical ligament exercise. If you still notice excessive pain, then discontinue doing this process altogether. I wouldn't want to be responsible for doing damage to someone's hand. :shock:

I hope this helps.

The single best thing for me has been to play along with the songs. When I play with a metronome, I can always take an extra beat to make a chord change, and the thing is still ticking along with me. I can't get away with this when playing with the song itself--if you're late, you've missed it, that's it. Really forces you to get it right.

Sorry, I just have to make one more post to this thread so I can atone for that frickin' lame post I did yesterday. Sorry Hawk, I realize now that post was very likely not at all what you were looking for (hand exercizes). I just thought of that because it's something I have to do because of having under-sized hands. I've got rhythm like a Harlem drummer and know lots of chords in every key, but what screws with my chording ability is my physical limitations. :(

OK, so here's something which, I hope, is more what you're really looking for. Unfortunately, this does call for a metronome or anything similar with adjustable speed. Try finding two or more chords that are hard for you to switch back and forth from. Then, find the speed that's your comfort spot for switching from one of these chord to another. Set you metronome (or whatever) at that speed. Try doing some 5 to 10 minute exercises using those chords at that speed for one week, then bump the speed up a little. Each week bump the speed up little by little. When you reach a speed that's just too hard to follow, bump the speed back down and go another week at that speed.

This works pretty good because since your working with chords changes that seem akward to you, it has the effect of making all the other chord changes seem simple and precise now. Again, this is just something that's worked very well for me so I hope it helps you. Happy strumming!

Hawkfoggy

Check out the free video lessons in the sig, they might help