Free guitar lesson
Back to course indexWe take the three chord shapes that you took the time to learn in the previous lesson and get them moving! This lesson is all about forcing those fingers to move quickly between the shapes, no matter how bad it sounds at first! Developing muscle memory is the name of the game.
In this lesson, our focus is to move between the three chords to a drum beat, but we can also learn how to read chord charts at the same time! So, here is our chord chart for the exercise:
Em /// Em /// Asus2 /// Asus2 /// Cmaj7 /// Cmaj7 /// Asus2 /// Asus2 ///
The first beat of each bar is depicted by a chord instruction, then the following beats by a "/" mark. So, in the example above, we play Em for two bars, then Asus2 for 2 bars. Then Cmaj7 for 2 bars, then Asus2 for a further two bars. The chord chart does not tell us what strumming pattern to play, just simply how long each chord is held for. We will be playing one strum at the start of each bar, as shown in the video.
Click on the link below to see the full exercise in tab. Remember, our tab player allows you to actually play along with the tab and slow it down if you need, so get it on loop, and get your guitars at the ready!
Ready to move on? Remember to check out every lesson in this unit first – then try the next unit...
We will now learn how to strum! This is a particularly important skill to learn properly, as this will make all those chords you have learnt sound like an actual song!