How to Switch Chords 10x Faster (My 3 Step Checklist)

0:00 All right, so you're going to switch chords, and [music] your fingers are landing slowly, and it feels like just every time you cannot get that chord switch fast enough. Maybe it feels like your hands are not built for [music] this, but I promise you they are. You're just missing the system. So, here it is, three steps, and by the end you're not just going to have another boring metronome drill, but you'll have a full system to nail chord switching for every new song you learn. My name is Michael Rice, and I run the largest acoustic guitar community on School, and [music] out of the thousands of beginners almost none of them had a talent problem. They had a system [music] problem. You see, chord switching is not about speed or getting to the next chord as fast as possible. It's about efficiency. [music] In a real song, you've got like half a second, maybe, to make that chord switch and make it sound natural. And if your

0:46 fingers are not set up properly to make that transition, [music] you're going to feel late every single time. You could take a regular chord like the G chord. Most beginners will learn it like [music] this, with their index finger, their middle finger, and their ring finger placed like this. And that's totally fine, but when they want to switch to like a C chord, for example, >> [music] >> they have to move their entire hand to make that chord switch. Not very efficient. But, if you played the G chord with these three fingers [music] and kept your index finger here, that C chord becomes so much faster and more efficient. Same [music] chord, but different fingering to get you a totally different outcome. It would be like if you had two cars race to the same spot, but you gave one car a huge head start. >> [music] >> The car without the head start has to drive way faster to reach the finish at

1:31 the same time. And that key insight takes me perfectly to step number one. [music] So, step one is all about placement, and that's not just where your fingers land. It's everything, from grip and how you [music] press on the fret and even string pressure. So, we're going to cover all that. But, all this decides whether a chord rings clean or you get that nasty [music] buzz. And basically everyone skips this and wonders why guitar feels impossible at the beginning. Okay, so here's your four-point placement checklist, and you can run through this every single time you learn a new chord. All right, so number one is grip. So, a lot of people will actually grip the fretboard with their thumb and they're going to drive it into the back of the fretboard, which is called death gripping. We're not going to do that. We're going to take this meaty part of our thumb and we're going to press that against the back of the fretboard with our thumb resting on top. This is going to make it so much

2:17 easier to make those chords [music] because you're not driving your thumb into the back of the fretboard, you're driving your hand, which gives you a lot more leverage. This is going to save you so much pain and strain on your hand. Okay, so grip is number one. Number two is finger angle. Now, a lot of people when they go to play a chord, they're just basically putting their fingers wherever is comfortable and they're hearing a lot of buzz. Now, the reason you're hearing buzz is because those fingers are making contact with strings they're not supposed to. So, all we're going to do is curl our hand forward to create these 90° angles on our finger joints and get that [music] nice clean chord. So, a good rule of thumb is if you hear buzzing, just roll your knuckles [music] forward and you'll get a nice clean chord almost every time. Okay, so so far we got grip and then we got finger angle. Number three on your checklist is string pressure. And here's a test that

3:03 almost no one does. So, all you're going to do is press on a random string. I'll just take the second fret fifth string here and all you're going to do is take your middle finger or whatever finger, doesn't matter, and just press super lightly, almost like you're not pressing at all. And then what you're going to do is you're basically going to strum with your right hand and slowly increase pressure [music] until you get that string to ring clean. Now, that's your standard. That's all you need to press. And a lot of people are probably thinking, "Wow, I did not need to press that hard." And you're probably creating a lot more finger pain than you need to. All right, so that's number three. We got grip, finger angle, and now we got string pressure. Number four is fret position. Now, a lot of beginners don't actually know this, but when you place your fingers on a string, um maybe they'll place it right in the middle of the fret, but if you place it right to the left of that metal fret,

3:49 you'll actually not need to press as hard and it'll be easier to get those strings to ring cleanly. All right, so that's it. We got grip, we got angle, we got string pressure, and we got fret position. So, you can make those four checks to nail placement for every single chord you ever use. Okay, now let's test that placement on some real chords, and let's see if you can improve your chord switching efficiency. Okay, so for this drill, I'm going to be using the four most common chords, being G, C, E [music] minor, and D, because they unlock the most amount of songs. Now, I'm going to show you the traditional shapes first, then I'm going to show you a version where you only need to move [music] two fingers to play them. Okay, so for the traditional G shape, we're going to start by again taking that nice comfortable grip with our thumb on top, placing our middle finger here on the

4:35 second fret, fifth string. Then we're going to place our ring finger here on the third fret, sixth string, again right next to that fret line. And then we're going to take our pinky here on the first string, third fret as well. All right? So, again we can see these nice 90° angles on our finger joints, and then we can strum all [music] six strings to get a nice G chord. Now, if that pinky's feeling a little bit weird, that's totally normal. Uh it's going to take a little bit of getting used to, but I promise you this variation of the G chord is going to make every other chord switch so much easier. So, now let's move to the C chord. So, from the G chord, I'm actually going to keep my index finger almost loaded onto that chord shape. So, going from the G to the C, all I have to do is move these two fingers down, and [music] then drop that index finger to get a nice clean C chord. So, let's

5:21 do that again. From the G chord to the C chord. So, so easy, [music] right? So, that is why that position wins every single time. And again, if you don't know how to play the C chord, all I'm doing is placing my ring finger here on the third fret, fifth string, >> [music] >> my middle finger there on the second fret, fourth string, and then my index finger there on the first fret, second string, and strumming the bottom five strings >> [music] >> to get a nice clean C chord. So, so far we have G, C. Next is [music] E minor. And a lot of beginners will play the E minor like this, and I'm going to show you why that's not the best way to play it. If you want to switch from the C chord to the E minor, you have to kind of move your whole hand around, but [music] it since we're already here on the C, going to the E minor is much easier like that, and then all the other [music] chords as well. So, what we're going to do for the

6:07 E minor chord is basically place our middle finger here where we'd had for the G, right? Same spot. And all we're going to do is place our >> [music] >> ring finger just underneath that. So, we're on the second fret on the fifth and fourth strings, and we're going to strum all four strings. All right. Now, the last chord is the D major chord. Now, the way that I play the D major chord looks like this, with my index finger here on the first string, second fret, and then my middle finger two strings above that on the same fret, and then my ring finger on the third fret, second string, strumming the bottom four strings. Now, if that's a tight squeeze, you can also play the D chord like this. >> [music] >> It's not that much different, although I do feel like this D chord is a lot more ergonomic and efficient going to all the

6:52 other chords, right? Like D, A minor, E minor, >> [music] >> right? So, that's just my preference, but if you play the D chord like this, it might be a little bit hard to unlearn that. So, whatever works for you. Okay, so now you know the most efficient way to play the [music] most common chords that unlock literally thousands of songs. So, now I'm going to show you that anchored version where you only need to move [music] two fingers to play them. So, for these variations, we're going to anchor our ring >> [music] >> and pinky on the second and first strings of the third fret, and we're going to keep them there for all four chords. Now, we're going to start our G chord with our ring finger here on the >> [music] >> third fret, sixth string, and then our index finger here on the second fret, fifth string. And then we're going to strum all six strings >> [music] >> to get a nice full G. Now, for the C chord, all we're going to do is move

7:38 those fingers down one string each to get a C add 9, super easy. So, from G to [music] C, so seamless. Now, for the E minor, all we're going to do is swap these fingers around. [music] All right, kind of like a staircase. So, you have 1 2 3 4. There's your E minor 7. Now, the last chord is the D sus 4. So, all you're going to do for this chord is either place your middle [music] finger there on the second fret G string or your index finger, whatever's more accessible. And just like that, you have all four chords being the G, C, [music] E minor, and D, only moving two fingers. Now, once you've got these chords down, I actually built a free series inside No Theory Club that combines them with strumming and rhythm to unlock literally hundreds of songs right away with full

8:25 visuals, exercises, and even song play-throughs. Totally free. It's the pin comment below. All right, so now placement's done. Let's move on to step two, which is tempo. Now, playing chords is one skill, but playing them in time is a completely different beast. So, what we're going to do is grab a metronome. And don't worry, we're going to apply this to real songs in just a second. I like to use a metronome right off Google and just set it to 60 BPM. So, all you're going to do is play that and get familiar with the beat. So, no chords yet, just get familiar with that click. Down. Down. Down. Down. So, we're going to start here by switching between two chords, no more than that. Now, the key and the challenge here is to strum [music] even if your chords aren't fully landed yet, and just keep that right hand moving. Because the second your brain

9:12 has to think about strumming and chord switching, it's going to feel like it's late or it's broken or there's just like too much going on. All right, so just get automatic with that right hand, and then just switch that chord no matter what. The more you can automate the one hand, the more you can focus on switching those chords. So, I'm going to practice going between G and [music] E minor with a metronome. So, G, click, E minor, click, G, >> [music] >> click, E minor, click. Giving yourself plenty of times to make that switch. [music] E minor, click. Then you can add a third chord to C. Maybe a G to a C. Maybe a E minor >> [music] >> to a D. Right? There's so many different combinations you can use here.

9:57 Again, the goal here is not about speed. You can lower the metronome down as low as you want. It's just about keeping that right hand consistently moving on time while switching chords. All right, now step three is where it finally feels like music. So, we're going to be following the chords through a real song. Now, the mistake here that a lot of beginners make is stacking strumming on top of rhythm on top of chord switching and everything just breaks because you don't have any of them actually locked in. So, for this step, we're going to do one thing. We're just going to focus on chord switching through the entire song. Click, chord, click, chord. Just like we were doing before. Now, this step works way better on a song you actually love. Not just like the classic ones that everyone teaches. Your songs. And that's exactly why I love using Strum. So, with Strum,

10:42 it actually connects to your Spotify and your Apple Music, whatever platform you have, and it shows all of your playlists and all your top songs. So, if you wanted to just play like a random song like this, you have the capo, you have the strumming pattern, and the cool thing about Strum is you can even play the song with it, which is crazy. So, we can do the same thing we were just doing with the metronome, and then we can hit this little scroll button down here. So, E minor. [music] D. G. D. >> [music] >> E minor. D. G. We can speed up a little bit here. D. G. D. Right? And you can follow all the way

11:27 through the song. And once you get comfortable, you can just play the music, play along with it, and you can get the strumming pattern down as well. But again, your only goal here is just to make it through the entire song with just chord switching. So, if you want to check out Strum, I put a link in the description for you. So, that's it. You have those three steps, being the placement, the [music] tempo, and then following the chords through a full song. And you have those anchored chords for efficiency [music] if you need them. Now, switching chords on time is just the beginning. In my free [music] four-chord freedom series, I take you through how to use chord switching in combination with strumming using full visuals and even song play throughs to get you confident way faster. It's totally free and it's the pinned comment below. So, that's it, guys. Like and subscribe [music] if this video helped. I'll see you in the next one.