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10 Effective Ways to Change Chords Easily

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For most beginner guitar players the first goal is to play an easy song. To do this you need a couple of things:

A guitar, some chords, a strumming pattern and a smooth chord transition. The latter is the tricky part.

Changing chords while maintaining a steady rhythm pattern is the biggest challenge on the path of the beginner.

It’s often a struggle and hard work to make the chord transition sound any good. It almost feels like it’s something that can not be done, but nothing could be further from the truth.

A smooth transition of changing chords is something that does take time and effort, but with the right tips and tricks you will get there a lot faster and make it work as it should.

Time to get this baby up and running!

Here are 10 effective tips:

1 – Work on chords first

Before you start changing chords, first focus on perfecting your chords and chord movement.

– Learn the 8 most important chords for beginners
– Work on each chord separately.
– Visualize the shape of the chord.
– Place your fingers in the shape of the chord and try to move all your fingers simultaneously.
– Land all your fingers on the strings at the same time (press with the very tips of your fingers).
– Remove your hands from the strings and repeat the exercise 10 times.
– Try it with a different chord each time.

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Basic Open Guitar Chords

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8 Most Important Open Guitar Chords For Beginners

Basic Open Guitar Chords

Basic Open Guitar Chords for Beginners

Where do you start when you want to learn to play guitar? Well, the first thing you want to do is learn is some basic open guitar chords, a basic strumming pattern and then start practicing some beginner songs, so we’ll start out with some basic open chords.

The chords are the building blocks for your songs, they give you the harmony. The strumming delivers the rhythm and together they are the accompaniment for your or someone else’s singing voice which in turn provides the melody.

The 8 most important chords for beginners are: C – A – G – E – D – Am – Em – Dm. (you can memorize the first 5 open major chords by the word CAGED)

Songs with Beginner Chords

With these simple chords alone you can play an endless amount of easy songs. For example there are about a million songs that use this chord progression: G – D – Em – C (also called the I – V – vi – IV progression).

Songs like “I’m yours” by Jason Mraz, “With or without you” by U2 and “She will be loved” by Maroon 5 can all be played with just these 4 chords. Not all of these songs are originally in the key of G but you could easily fix that with the help of a capo and play it in the appropriate key.

The open chords are also the starting point and components for the more advanced chords that follow like barre chords. All barre chords are derived from open chords. If you’re interested check out The Four Most Essentiall Barre Chords. 

How to Play The Beginner Guitar Chords

In the video lesson below I’m going to show you how to play each chord correctly step by step and how and where to put your fingers on the strings.

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