Chords and Muscle Memory

Posted under Uncategorized by spencer

Ally emailed me asking how do I improve moving from one chord to another as this is quite difficult?

Decide on a chord to learn or re-learn - lets say an open D major for a beginner.

Place your fingers on the neck at the right place for the chord (as per one of the dotted diagrams or in this case xx0232 (not going to play bottom e and a strings, 2nd fret on g string, 3rd on B, 2nd on e - also use 1st finger on g 3rd on b and 2nd on e)

I’m assuming you are right handed otherwise swap the hands in the instructions.

Using your right hand, move each of your fretting fingers so they are in the middle of the fret. Do this by sliding them along the string they are on to touch the edge of the metal fret towards the tuning pegs and then towards the pickups, then back to the middle.

Do this sliding thing for all three of the fingers for the chord. What we are doing is ‘setting’ a good position. There is no point putting a poorly formed chord in muscle memory.

Ok now your left hand is in the correct fretting position – your left wrist should not be bent at an awkward angle. If it is, shift the guitar onto your other knee, or adjust the strap so it’s higher on your body. Play the chord to check it doesn’t buzz (i.e. your fingers are not muting other strings..).

Once the chord is formed in the right place, and you are holding it correctly so it plays ok, we can move onto the next stage.

Holding the chord, start applying more pressure, and more pressure, and a bit more, (stop if the pain gets too much). More pressure and hold for a count of 20. Then release the hand completely and give it a shake.

Put the hand back into position, using right hand if necessary to adjust the fingers and repeat this process of squeezing the chord shape into your muscle memory.

Squeeze, squeeze, more pressure, hold for count of 20, release your hand and shake it out.

After about the 3rd time doing this you may begin to notice that you actually move back to the chord shape quite quickly – well a lot faster than you did before.

Now do the same for a different chord shape i.e. G 320033.

Once you’ve finished the two chords, then take a break for 10 minutes before continuing.

Now the third stage is to put them together.

Play the D chord and then play the G chord shape slowly repeatedly one after the other. You need to repeat this movement at least eight times. As you have already ‘programmed’ in good versions of the shapes, then your fingers start to find the most natural way to change between them. Try to speed up changing between one and the other until it sounds silly.

Look at what is happening each time to your individual fingers – so for a few changes look and notice what your first finger is doing. Then second finger, then third. This is the last time you are really going to be aware of what the individual fingers are doing.

Now take another break for a few minutes.

Finally we check that it’s starting to get ingrained. Play the changes without looking at your hands – 4 strums per chord, then 2 strums then 1 strum. Play it faster, play it slower, play with only upstrokes, play only downstrokes.

Take a well deserved rest if you get this done (takes about ½ an hour) you’ll have one change done. There are not a lot more to learn before you can string together a whole song.