I never really took a serious interest until 5 days ago.

Its great, after 5 days I'm playing "everybody hurts" by REM and "4 seasons in one day" by Crowded Day.
Its great how your fingerprint dissappear after playing hehe. maybe I'm practising too much?

How long until you were able to change chords instantly?
Some I can change easily, but going from E minor to D is dang tricky.

Discuss.

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Yeah, I'm learning guitar too. I don't know any particular songs, I just play random stuff. As far as chords, I'm fluent with G, D, A, Am, E, and Em.

Me too!

I know the chords: A major, E major, and E minor.

Power chords. Various songs based entirely on power chords, including various melodies that they may or may not have. Or just some melodies.

There is no such thing as practicing too much...
unless you start losing sleep or something over it...
that might be too much.

It takes about a week to get good with chords if you practice enough. Start out playing one chord four times and then switching, slowly enough that you can switch without stopping.

Chords I'm pretty good at (I know some other ones too, but these are my best):
A
A minor
A7
B Minor
C
C9
C add9
D
D minor
D7
Dsus2
Dsus4
E
E minor
Em7
F
G
G7

I can't do power chords very well.
I'd recommend learning on a steel-string acoustic. It forces you to play better.

Oh yes, a good song to learn:
The Beatles- 8 Days A Week

It was my first song. It made me good at b-minor, and helped with G -> D transitions
b-minor is the hardest chord in it.

Yeah, when I was learning the basic chords I had trouble with switching from E, Em, E7, to D and stuff. You'll get the hang of it after a while, it's like a second languange for your hands.;)

BTW, fingerweights and other finger strengthening stuff helps a hell of a lot, as well.

That's my case. But it's still not too much.

also, a good way to get your fingers strenghtened is to start practicing basic chromatic exercises

|---------------------------------------1-2-3-4-|
|-------------------------------1-2-3-4---------|
|-----------------------1-2-3-4-----------------|
|----------------1-2-3-4------------------------|
|--------1-2-3-4--------------------------------|
|-1-2-3-4---------------------------------------|


just use them to warm up. it'll strenghten your fingers.

Oh yes... I recently started learning to play guitar and i play on a steel-string acoustic... my fingers are killing me at the end of every day, but its worth it.. makes you learn to press harder on the strings.

it also makes you more accurate and concise in your playing, especially compared to an electric guitar with distortion.

yeah, starting on an acoustic forced me to play with precision, and when i went on my first electric, it was already a piece of cake.

For some reason I find it harder to play on my electric. That surprised me when I first got it.

I need a new acoustic. Electrics are cool, but I like playing acoustic.

Not really harder, it's just a different technique to get used to. once you get it down, all the knowledge from acoustic playing comes back to you.

I guess it's not entirely harder, but in some ways it seems harder. I don't know.

It took about a month or two for me to become comfortable with switching between chord shapes really fast. Now I'm working on diminished shapes and learning chord shapes in Celtic Tuning.

You should try to learn the theory behind the chords instead of just memorizing them. This way you can construct your own chords as necessary

And yeah, like Seb said, start learning scales(start off chromatic) and I would probably practice some blues scales, so you can start to learn some awesome leads

here's a few tips I give to my students.

first of all, every (and I do mean every) chord voicing can be moved across the neck and still be the same Type of chord (major/min/dim/7/etc), but with a different key. You probably know this about barre chords, but it applies to literally everything on the guitar. not just chords, but scales too.

Here's a little "challenge" using this idea. You know the voicing used in the open G chord?


3 2 0 0 0 4
|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|-|o|-|-|-|-|
|o|-|-|-|-|o|
|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|-|-|-|-|-|-|

Well you can move it across the neck to get this chord shape, which is the same exact voicing, but with a barre replacing the open strings.

3 2 1 1 1 4
|-|-|o|o|o|-|
|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|-|o|-|-|-|-|
|o|-|-|-|-|o|
|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|-|-|-|-|-|-|

Effective way to apply it? here's a C chord in 8th position, the way everyone knows how to play it

1 3 4 2 1 1
8|o|o|o|o|o|o|
-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
-|-|-|-|o|-|-|
-|-|o|o|-|-|-|
-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
-|-|-|-|-|-|-|

Now here's a c chord, in 8th position, with a different voicing:

3 2 1 1 1 4
-|-|-|o|o|o|-|
-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
-|-|o|-|-|-|-|
8|o|-|-|-|-|o|
-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
-|-|-|-|-|-|-|

The different between those is in the first voicing, the 5th is immediatly after the root, while in the second voicing, the chord following the natural progression of root, major 3rd, fifth, root, major third, fifth.

(note: the - on the same line as the 8 are spaces, ubb code is mean for offsetting diagrams like that)


All of your scale patterns can be moved the same way. so taking a C major scale with the root on the 3rd fret of the 5th string, and moving it up chromatically up one semi-tone, you get a C# major scale. it's that simple. you just need to learn all of the major patterns.


I'll come back with more knowledge in a new thread sometime.