Switching Between Chords

Hello everyone! For this blog post, I will be learning how to switch between chords with my guitar. I've been playing the guitar for about 3 years and still have trouble switching from certain chords such as the E chord back to the D chord. But reading this part of the book helped me to switch in between chords.

"One trick that's good to know is that you can't possibly move your fretting hand exactly at the same time as your picking hand strums. That means you'll need to get that fretting hand in place before the strum. So, any time after you count beat "four," you can start moving those fretting fingers into place for the next chord" (DuBrock 11). Since I usually had trouble switching between chords, this trick helped me by telling me what beat to change from a chord to another. In the book it was teaching me how to switch from an A chord to a D chord. It was sort of challenging at first but the tip Andrew gave helped me.

D chord

A chord

"If you use the first A chord fingering shown, notice how your ring finger frets notes on the second string for both the A and D chord; it holds down the second fret for the A chord and the third fret for the D chord. You can use this finger as a guide by leaving it on the string when you switch chords" (DuBrock 11). This tip is important to know because it gave me a sense on how to transition from the A chord to the D chord without having trouble on where to place my fingers on the fret board of the guitar. The tip of using guide fingers can help me a lot because the only fingers I am lifting when I'm switching to another chord, are the fingers that doesn't use the same string as the previous chord. But the guide finger can slide to any fret if the previous chord uses the same string as the chord I am going to transition to.

"Remember that you can slow down the tempo until you're able to make the switch in rhythm" (DuBrock 11). This tip is also important to have in mind because when I play to fast and try to switch to a different chord i tend to mess up by having my fingers on the wrong fret or string. It is always a good thing to start slow and to slowly work my way on strumming in different speeds to be able to strum at the right rhythm without any mistakes.

After reading this section of the book I made sure to count beats while strumming to properly switch chords, use the tip of using guiding fingers to make it easier to transition to other chords and to play in my own pace to switch from a chord to another without going off the rhythm of a song.

Since I had some hardships while playing/learning the guitar, would you also have the same hardships I have went through?