Kirk's Weekly Guitar Lesson: Changing Chords

Hi, once again. I'm back!

Kirk's weekly Lessons

One of the most frustrating aspects of learning guitar is mastering the art of changing chords. Moving from one to the next can seem impossible to those just starting out, and I reminded myself of the feeling the other day by playing left-handed. Ugh!! Could anything be more unnatural and painful? So, for all you fresh twangers, this week I've put together a lesson which should help. I've used a few very easy to grab chord shapes, a straight forward strum pattern and wrapped it all up in a 4 minute movie. You'll find it here:

Changing Chords

Contributing member solidwalnut has also posted a great beginners lesson on barre chords which you'll find here:

Barre chords for Beginners

GfB&B Community

We're fast approaching 30,000 members at Guitar for Beginners and Beyond! What a great bunch of twangers, too; we're very lucky to attract so many great players who are more than willing and able to answer questions and pass on their expertise. If you haven't already, come on over and join up and join in.

PlaneTalk - The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book

I keep sending out the book/slide-rule/DVD that teaches the simple visualization technique (the 'trick') to seeing the whole fretboard as a unit, as familiar friendly territory no matter what the music is doing. If you've been stuck in pentatonic mode, cramped into little boxes, wondering why it is that you can't turn them into real music, then it's time to read PlaneTalk. You'll learn about that last piece of the puzzle and you'll be pleased to find out just how simple it is ... and you'll wonder why no one has told you about it before.

Read a bunch of testimonials here and go to the site here.

Slide Guitar in Standard & Dropped D Tunings

If you like the sound of slide guitar, but you can't face tackling all those open tunings usually associated with the art, relax! You don't need to re-tune your guitar to play slide, in fact in many ways, standard tuning is better than open tunings. For one thing, you don't need to mentally remap the fretboard; for another you can do as I did and develop a hybrid style for yourself, one where you can inject a few slide licks in with your normal way of playing ... it sure can spice it up. Have a look at this video to see/hear what I mean. I reveal everything I know about it on my recently released DVD ... drop in and read more.

OK, until next week, may the twangin' be melodious.

Kirk
www.guitar.name