Once you can play some clean guitar chords and you’re starting to learn songs, we’re going to need to take a look at how to transition from one chord to the next.
Chord transitions are often times one of the biggest things that hold beginner to intermediate players back. We can play the chord no problem but when it comes time to transition to another chord, we often hesitate and feel a disconnect between one chord and the next. Often times players will get overwhelmed by the transition and overthink it. In this blog, I want to teach you how to overcome the hesitation and disconnect of chord transitions by teaching you a new way to look at transitions.
Alright, let’s break down a chord transition so I can show you an example of our new thought process. Let’s start with the chord transition C – D. Open C and D chords are usually some of the first chords people learn. What most people don’t see is that there is a pattern between the C and D chord. Can you see it? What do you notice that is the same between these two chords?
Seeing Patterns within Chords
If you have seen the pattern, great job! If not, that’s totally fine. By the end of this blog, you’ll know what to look for and will be able to spot these patterns easily. The pattern that I see here is that our 2nd and 3rd fingers are in the same relative position but just on different strings. As we can see, the 3rd finger is one string above and one fret higher than the 2nd finger. Here are some pictures for reference:
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After seeing this, I have a question for you: How can we use that to our benefit? How can we take this knowledge and use it to become a better guitar player?
New Chord Transition Focus
I want you to try this chord transition and only focus on our 2nd and 3rd fingers moving together to the next chord. Focus on keeping them in the same relative position as they move. After you fret them, then we can worry about the last finger to go down. I would even recommend practicing moving fingers 2 and 3 between the chords without fretting the other fingers just to get a feel for it.
Less Work is More Efficient
When we can spot patterns like this, we can make our chord transitions very efficient. However, If you overthink it, your hand will most likely lose its shape and your fingers might make chaotic moves that actually take more effort than if we move them less. I know this will be a tough sell for our fingers but if we focus and concentrate on keeping our fingers in relative position, our chord transitions will become so much smoother, efficient and of course clean! If we want to do this all with a strumming pattern at the same time… we’ll just have to check out the next blog!
If you’re feeling good about your chord transitions, I would love to show you how you can effectively learn an entire song to surprise your partner! Check out the lesson right here!
The more you practice seeing patterns in chord transitions, the easier and more natural it will become. If you want to see me teaching this technique more in-depth, I would encourage you to sign up for my completely free 5-day course. All you need is an email address to get started and I will send you 5 great lessons over the course of the next 5 days. What have you got to lose?! Check out my course and I can’t wait to help you become the guitar player that you want to be!
Click here for your free 5-day course to become a better player!
Keep rockn’ and I’ll see you later!
