Playing more Chords and Revisiting Chord Change

Hello everyone! For my last blog post, I'll be playing "complicated chords" and returning to chord changing. Even till this day I still struggle from chord changing but after reading a tip from the book, it helped me much more.

"To play a Dm chord, place your middle finger on the second-fret space of the third string and your ring finger on the third-fret of the second string. Then reach up with your index finger to place it on the first-fret space of the first string" (DuBrock 38). At first, playing this chord wasn't as difficult to do, but as I tried to play other chords with it, I was having trouble with the chord changing. Going from a G chord to a Dm chord is not easy, it becomes confusing on where I should place my fingers on the guitar strings and fret.

But as I kept reading through the book, I found a solution to my problem. "Remember that you can change your chord a little early, and strum though the open strings while you're doing that. That open-stringed strum goes by so quickly that it's hardly noticeable, and guitarists of all levels do this all the time" (DuBrock 42). This tip from the book actually helps me a lot and is good to keep in mind. From this tip my transition from the Dm chord to the G chord or any chord is improving. Keeping this method as a habit of mine might help me grow more in the future as a guitarist.

"To play an F7 chord, place your ring finger on the third-fret space of the fourth string and your middle finger on the second-fret space of the third string. Then add your pinky finger to the fourth-fret space of the second string and your index finger to the first-fret space of the first string" (DuBrock 84). In my opinion and as a beginner, this was the hardest chord I've played so far. This chord requires my fingers to stretch really far from each other which was hard for my small fingers to do and was pretty painful to do. In the book, Andrew informs to slowly strum through this chord to get used to it, but if i was still struggling, i would have to readjust my fingers position on the fret board (DuBrock 85).

Which chord looks the hardest to play by looking at the pictures? F7 or Dm?

DuBrock, Andrew. Play Acoustic Guitar in Minutes. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2014. Print.