How to Smoothly Change Any Chord on Guitar

First, let us ask ourselves, what IS a good chord change?

It has many different elements, but to summarize them, the goal is to: consistently change chords fast, smoothly and in-time. So, let this be our guide today.

The biggest problem I help my students overcome is placing one finger at a time. If you want to change chords quickly, you have to press all your fingers simultaneously. 

While sometimes practicing this concept alone can solve this problem, it also has a lot to do with finger independence.

This is something beginner guitarists usually haven’t developed yet. If you ever feel like your fingers aren’t doing what you want them to, you certainly have a finger independence problem.

You can do specific exercises to improve that or incorporate playing melodies into your practice.

 Now, let’s tackle specific exercises you can do to improve your chord changes.

Defining Exactly What You Are Doing

First, you must define exactly what you are doing in a specific chord change. This will help you make repetitions that actually count and make you better.

To do this, you will break down the chord change to move only one finger at a time. Figure out where the first finger is placed in both chords. Then, just do a few repetitions of changing just that one finger. You don’t have to strum the chords because it will sound awful.

Then, you repeat the process for the other three fingers. It will only take you a few minutes to get this down.

This will give you a better perspective of what needs to happen when you change the chords and what you must focus on when practicing. It will also prepare you for the next step.

Breaking It Down Further

Once you know exactly what needs to happen for each finger, the next step is to practice changing two fingers. You can do the following combinations:

                                           • 1-2     • 1-3     • 1-4     • 2-3     • 2-4     • 3-4

Usually, the first few are very easy, and the problems seem to be mainly on the last three combinations. That’s why I sometimes suggest to my students to practice changing chords without their first finger.

But, nevertheless, you should be observant as to what is easy for you and where the challenge is, and then put your time into practicing the challenging parts of the chord changes.

Make sure that, no matter which combination you are practicing, the fingers have to move and press the strings at the same time.

It’s also worth mentioning that the hand position  and thus, the thumb position, might change for each chord. Open chords are usually played with the thumb wrapped around the neck, while barre and any other chords that require more power and stretching are best played, with the thumb on the back of the guitar neck.

Practice each combination for 1 minute, and then rotate between them randomly, until you feel like you are getting the hang of it.

You can also expand the idea to three-finger combinations. This is especially useful for any chord that uses all four fingers. Like previously, make sure the fingers move simultaneously. 

These exercises will greatly improve your finger independence, which will ultimately transfer to other chord changes and make your overall guitar playing a lot easier.

Tying It All Together

Now it’s time to practice the actual chord changes. Again, you don’t have to strum anything, just make sure the fingers move at the same time.

Since it can be quite challenging to focus on all fingers at the same time, you can simply rotate your focus on each finger for 4-6 repetitions. Make sure that whichever finger you are focusing on, is doing virtually perfect movements.

If you still have troubles with fingers slacking behind, you can reverse the challenge and make the slacking finger fret first. 

But the best exercise for pressing all fingers at the same time is using a metronome. This way, you’ll have a definite deadline to change the chord – which is also what actually happens in real life when you are strumming a song. Just find the right tempo, and change the chord every 2 beats (or 1 beat once you get better at this).

Spend about 10 minutes per day doing these exercises and watch your chord changes become easier and easier.

And lastly don’t forget to actually use the chords you practiced and have fun with them! Find a song that uses these chords, or just make up a chord progression yourself and be creative.

I hope this process will help you overcome your guitar playing challenges. Feel free to try it and let me know how it goes.

Good luck! 🙂 

©Janez Janežič, 2024