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About The Author

Janez Janežič is helping his clients with their guitar playing challenges in his fun and effective guitar lessons at inštrukcije kitare Novo mesto, Slovenia. If you are looking for guitar lessons locally in that area, feel free to contact him.

Have you ever wanted to learn your favorite song on guitar, but something held you back?

Have you looked up the chords on the internet, but then your fingers couldn’t keep up with the fast changes?

If that sounds like you, you came to the right place. And the good news is: you CAN get better at it. 

Here’s how.

Defining Exactly What You Are Doing

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

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

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

To do this, you’re going to break down the chord change to moving 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 exactly needs to happen when you change the chords, and what you have to be focused on when practicing. It will also prepare you for the next step.

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

It has many different elements, but to summarize them, we could say 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 ever want to change chords fast, you have to press them all at the same time. 

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 do, then 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.

How to Smoothly Change Any Chord on Guitar

Tying It All Together

Breaking It Down Further