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.

Getting Started with Fingerpicking

Hello everyone! For mu fourth blog post, I'll be learning how to finger-pick! I have always struggled with finger-picking my guitar, I would have trouble with which finger should pluck a specific string and how to transition quickly between chords and strings.

As I was reading through the chapter of finger-picking, I couldn't understand what it was explaining to me and I couldn't seem to follow with my guitar. Finger-picking the guitar is one of my weaknesses, whenever I'm told to finger-pick I would always have a difficult time.

The first part of the lesson was easy to follow, I was learning a simple and easy finger-picking pattern. This pattern only had the use of 4 strings and 3 basic chords, Em, A, and D. There was only one problem that I had encountered but as i continued to repeat the steps, and I finally got it. This is a cheesy phrase but, practice makes perfect!

With that pattern I was only using two fingers, but as the chapter went on, i had to add more fingers which made it really difficult for me. "We'll use our middle finger to pluck the second string. Let's start by plucking that string by plucking that string once a measure while we fret an E7 chord" (DuBrock 128). The first pattern made me have to use only my thumb and index finger, which i was comfortable with but I had to add the middle finger. I am not used to plucking with the middle finger so it was really hard for me to do the next pattern. I would get confused on where to place my fingers and which string to pluck because of how uncomfortable it was for me. My goal for the next blog post is to be able to finger-pick without having any trouble with my fingers.

Imagine yourself as a guitarist and being a beginner, would you also have trouble fingerpicking your guitar?

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

Syncopated Strumming

Hello everyone! For my third blog post, I'll be learning how to do syncopated strumming! Syncopated strumming is a type of trick to make our strums more funky and will also allow us to create other patterns.

Syncopation means to accent weak beats. DuBrock says "The strongest beats happen on beats 1 and 3, so if you highlight beats 2 and 4, you're already playing a syncopated pattern" (DuBrock 26). At first I was confused about syncopated strumming. I didn't really follow up on when to strum stronger and when to strum without any power (weak strums). But looking at the measure makes me understand a little bit more about syncopated strumming because I am a visual learner.

The thing that is hard about syncopation strumming is keeping up with the rhythm. "Like many syncopated strums, the last example is pretty tricky pattern to get a handle on. Remember to play with a metronome and slow it down to where you can play the strum pattern. Then, gradually increase the metronome's speed until you can play it comfortably at a moderate tempo" (DuBrock 28). Being synced with the rhythm is the most important thing when playing the guitar. But even though i had a hard time keeping up with the rhythm, I still managed to do this trick. I just need to practice more and maybe I'll be a decent guitar player! :)

If you were/are a guitarist, would you ace at syncing with rhythm?

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

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?