Smoothing Out Your Guitar Chords

Perhaps the biggest frustration my beginning guitar students experience is not being able to move from chord to chord as quickly as they would like. All guitarists go through this phase. If I had an easy way to get over this rough patch, I could sell my secret and be rich. The truth is that it takes practice – lots and lots of practice.

When you practice guitar chords, you are training your motor skills. Your goal is to think about a chord and have your fingers form it automatically. This takes time to develop, and it involves a lot of repetition. The only way to develop your chord-forming skill is to – wait for it – practice forming chords. Let's use a sports analogy to illustrate the point. If you are a basketball player and you want to improve your free throws, you're going to have to shoot a lot of free throws. If you miss your first four attempts and then make your free throw on the fifth try, you don't stop. You keep shooting free throws so you can teach your body how a successful free throw attempt feels. The same goes with chords. You don't just play a few chords and stop. You play them over and over until you can practically play them in your sleep.

Here's one exercise you can use for practicing chords. Let's say you are learning a song in D, and it has the chords D, G, and A7. First, pick two chords, and practice switching back and forth between them over and over. Then pick another pair. Try all the possible two-chord combinations.  So:

• Alternate between D and A7 for a while.
• Alternate between D and G for a while.
• Alternate between G and A7 for a while.
• Try a longer combination. Cycle through D – G – A7 – D.

Some general tips as you practice switching from chord to chord:

• Don't worry about trying to play a fancy strumming pattern. You are working on your fretting hand, not your strumming hand. Simply strum each chord once. You can add strumming patterns another time.
• Start slowly so that your fretting hand is relaxed. As you get more comfortable with the chords, see if you can gradually pick up the pace, but never play so fast that your fretting hand becomes tense.
• Keep your fingers as close to the strings as possible as you switch chords. The closer you keep your fingers to the strings, the faster you'll eventually be able to play.
• Study the fingering for each chord. Do the chords have any common fingers or similar shapes? For example, when moving back and forth between D and A7, if you play the A7 with fingers 1 and 2, you'll find that you can easily keep those two fingers in the same formation, move them to strings 1 and 3, and you're in perfect position to play the D chord.

Finally, while I don't generally recommend practicing in front of the TV, this is what I call a "TV" exercise. With the sheer repetition, this type of chord practice can be mind numbing. When I practiced chords in this way, I would plant myself in front of a TV, picked a handful of chords to practice, and watch a show while I played the chords over and over and over.

If you practice your chords like this, you won't sound better instantly, but if you do this consistently, you'll experience noticeable improvement in just a few weeks.

Lesson #12

Continuing the practice of reviewing each jazz guitar lesson with David Frackenpohl at GSU to wrap my head around the new material and help others who may be on the same path.

Dave took a teaching break over the summer, so it's been a couple months since my last lesson. I've been getting a lot out of our sessions, and I've been looking forward to starting up again.

We began by looking at a new arpeggio exercise and a series of inversions to enhance fretboard knowledge (more on these later). We then played through Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. This went pretty well, since I've been working on the song for two months! I was glad for the extra time on it. I play with a quartet, and I've always cringed when the leader calls Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. The bridge is tricky to improvise over. I can certainly navigate the changes now! Ironically, the quartet leader hasn't called this tune since I began working on it.

Next, I played through two pages of Blues in 12 Keys from Galbraith's Guitar Comping book. My original assignment was from the Brazilian Guitar book, but I was getting burned out on samba, so I assigned this exercise to myself instead. I love this Guitar Comping book. The etudes are challenging, but it's a terrific book for expanding your chord knowledge. After I played the blues comping study, Dave suggested I look at Charlie Parker's Blues for Alice.

Then I played my transcription of Kenny Burrell's classic Chitlins con Carne solo. Dave told me I sounded like Kenny Burrell when I played it. I don't begin to approach the level of a Kenny Burrell, but I was grateful for the compliment. I played along with the recording many times and worked hard to match Burrell's inflections. I love the soul jazz style, and I want to keep studying Kenny Burrell and other soul jazz guitarists.

Dave offered plenty of new challenges for the next lesson.

• Diatonic Arpeggio Exercise: In every major key, outline the Imaj7 up, the iim7, iiim7 up, etc., and then reverse that going down. Use strict alternate picking. Do this in all major keys, as well as harmonic and melodic minor. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but I love doing these sorts of exercises. I've been wanting to change up my arpeggio routine, so this exercise comes at a good time.
• Inversion Exercise: Play through each inversion of a Maj7 chord using drop 2 voicings. Do this in all 12 keys in the cycle of 4ths. Start by playing up the neck in one key, then move to the next next key and play down the neck. For example, start ascending on Cmaj7 inversions. When you reach the top of the neck, find the nearest drop 2 voicing of Fmaj7 and descend, ascend on Bbmaj7, etc. Jazz guitar is like an endless puzzle, and I enjoy exploring the fretboard and unlocking its mysteries.
• Galbraith's Guitar Comping: Learn the next 1-2 pages of the Blues in 12 Keys study.
• Blues for Alice: Learn this standard. The melody is good for single line technique, and I need to have this particular set of changes under my fingers in all keys. This particular variation of blues changes is called "Bird Blues."
• Chitlins con Carne: I've transcribed the Kenny Burrell solo, but I haven't memorized it yet. I need to memorize it for next time. Also, I need to add some Kenny Burrell style "self comping" in the spaces between the single line licks. I'm more than happy to keep working on this solo. As I mentioned before, I love the soul jazz style, and in my book, Kenny Burrell is the man.
• There Will Never Be Another You: Learn this standard. Memorize the melody and chord changes and be ready to improvise. I requested this one, because I've always felt awkward improvising over some of the changes. With a couple weeks of focused work, I should be as comfortable with this one as I am now with Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

Whew, that's a lot to work on, but I'm glad to get these lessons going again. I've learned a lot from Dave, and the hard work is beginning to show in my playing. Even though we only work on a few songs at a time, I am learning concepts that apply to my playing in general. I find that I'm able to navigate chord changes to new songs more easily, and I feel like I have more command over my improvised solos. I still have a long way to go, and I'm glad to have Dave as a guide.

Chord Hammer-On Exercise

Here's a chord exercise that's great for beginners. (It's a pretty good exercise for advanced players, too.) If you are just beginning to learn how to play guitar chords, you probably build your chords by putting down one finger at a time. Eventually, you want to be able to have your fingers form a chord shape all at the same time. Once you can do this, you'll be able to move from one chord to the next more smoothly.

This exercise involves "hammer-ons." To play a hammer-on, don't pluck or strum with your picking hand. Instead, use your chord hand to come down on the string quickly enough to make it sound a note. Here's the exercise.

Step 1

• Play any chord. Start with one that's easy for you. Try an E or an A minor chord.
• Sustain the chord to make sure each string is ringing.
• As you're sustaining the chord, let off the pressure of your left hand so that the strings that you are fingering stop ringing. Keep touching the strings. You want your fingertips to maintain contact.
• Now, without strumming, pump your left hand fingers while maintaining the chord shape. Squeeze quickly, hold a little, and then let up, still maintaining contact with the strings. If you are able to squeeze quickly enough, you may be able to get those strings to ring softly.

Step 2

• Form the chord again.
• You're going to use the same pumping action in your left hand, except this time, raise your fingers so they're just barely above the strings. Without strumming, see if you can pump your left hand fingers quickly enough to get a chord to sound. This is the hammer-on. Your left hand "hammers on" to the strings to make them ring.

Step 3

• After you're comfortable raising your fingers slightly and playing the chord hammer-on, try raising them a little bit more…just a fraction of an inch, then a little higher, and then a little higher. See how high you can raise your fingers while still maintaining the chord shape.

Quick Tip: Think of hammering on quickly rather than squeezing hard. If you focus on squeezing hard, you'll build up unnecessary tension in your left hand. That's the last thing you want. Try to keep your hand as relaxed as possible by moving quickly and loosely.

Practicing chords like this will help train your fingers to move as a unit instead of one by one. Once you can play one chord like this, try another one, and then see if you can move back and forth between the chords just playing hammer-ons. It's challenging at first, but you'll get better with practice. Soon you'll be switching from one chord to the next with ease!
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If you live in Atlanta and are interested in private or group guitar lessons, please check my website at www.godfreyguitar.com for more information or email me directly.

First Guitar Chords

Santa brought you a guitar for Christmas, or maybe it was or your birthday, or maybe you bought it on a whim. You want to rock out on your new electric guitar, or you want to strum folk songs on your acoustic, or you want to play in church. Whatever kind of guitar you are holding, or whatever kind of music you want to play, congratulations!

Let's assume you have a book with chord charts and that you know how to read them. Now what? You've probably already discovered that there are a zillion different chords. Where do you start?

My first recommendation is to find a teacher. Did I mention that I teach guitar? Well, I do, and if you're in Atlanta and are looking for a guitar teacher, you can find my info at www.godfreyguitar.com. Now that the shameless plug is over…

If you want to learn guitar chords on your own, you can learn them in small groups that go well together. Here's some very basic music theory: There is usually one specific note that any given song is based on. This note is your home base…the note the usually feels "right" to end with. This note is called the "key." For example, if your home base is the G note, then you are probably playing in the key of G. There are specific chords that fit with each key.

How does this apply to learning chords? You can narrow your choices down by learning which sets of chords go with which keys. As soon as you've learned a few chords within a key, then you're ready to play a song in that key!

There are 12 major keys and 12 minor keys. (To oversimplify, songs in major keys usually sound happy or bright, and songs in minor keys usually sound sad or dark.) For starters, I suggest learning chords in the following keys. (A small "m" after a capital letter stands for minor. For example, "Em" is short for E minor, and "Am" is short for A minor.)

• Key of G: First learn G, C, and D. (Then add D7, Am, and Em.)
• Key of A minor: First learn Am, E, and Dm. (Then add E7 and C.)
• Key of D: First learn D, G, and A. (Then add A7 and Em.)
• Key of A: First learn A, D, and E. (Then add E7.)
• Key of E minor: First learn Em, Am, and B7. (Then add G.)
• Key of C: First learn C, F, and G. (Then add G7, Dm, and Am.)
• Key of E: Learn E, A, and B7.

You don't have to learn the chords in this order, although G and A minor are good ones to start with. These aren't all the keys, and they aren't all the chords that go with each key, but if you learn the chords in each group, you'll be able to play a LOT of songs. More good news is that there is a lot of overlap. Once you've learned a chord in one key, you'll find that it pops up again in other keys.

One final word of advice – Take it slow. You don't have to learn all the chords at once. Start off with just one or two and expand from there. It's better to play a few chords really well than to stumble through a lot of them. Just like learning a language, your chord vocabulary will increase over time, and as you gain more experience, you'll find that it becomes easier and easier to learn new chords.

Congratulations on your first guitar, and good luck! If you have any questions, please email me!