How do you easily switch between guitar chords?

Answer 1

Two ways. The most important is: practice But the other way is technique. Proper fingering. Some chords have multiple ways they can be fingered, and you always want to pick the easiest. Now, some fingerings may not *seem* the easiest, just because they aren't the ones you already know, but in the long run, they are worth learning because they really do make things easier. In particular, most people play an open A chord the wrong way, but the proper fingering makes it easier. The essense of fingering is laziness: you want to move your hand and fingers as little as possible. So in particular, if you have a finger down in one chord that's already in the right place for the next chord, you want to just *leave* it there. Don't pick it up, only to place it back down in the same place. And if you can use a fingering that *let's* you just leave it there, then that's clearly the choice! So let's look at the open A chord. Most people play it with their 1st finger on the 4th string, 2nd finger on the 3rd string, and 3rd finger on the 2nd string, three-in-a-row. But that's a weak fingering (however popular it is). The better fingering is like this: 1st finger on the *3rd* string, 2nd finger on the 4th string, 3rd finger on the 2nd string. It may *look* a little awkward, and feel awkward until you learn it. But it really is the better fingering. Why? Because consider the context of an A chord. What chords are you most likely to want to go to from an A? The biggest answer would probably be D. Well, notice, if you finger the A chord as I recommend, your first finger is now already in the right place for the D chord, and can just be left there! You only have to move two fingers, instead of all three, to switch between the two. This lets you do it faster and smoother. The other chord you'd be likely to want to go to from an A would be an E, and, while we don't have any fingers exactly in the right place, we at least already have the 1st finger on the 3rd string, like we want it for an E; we just have to slide it back one fret. This is still easier than entirely re-arranging all three fingers. Finally, more rarely, you might want to go between A and Amaj7. For instance, the old Beatles song "Mother Nature's Son" uses the sequence A Amaj7 A7. This is perfect for this fingering! You just slide your first finger back one fret to make the Amaj7, then take it off entirely to do the A7. Similarly, a G chord normally be fingered using your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers, instead of your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. This makes it much easier to go to C, the most likely chord for you to be going to. But no fingering rule is absolute, it's always contextual. If you have a song which requires you to move to something more unusual, and a different fingering would make that particular move easier, then use the different fingering. For instance, if I had something which required that I add an A note to the top of my G chord, then I might well use the common 1-2-3 fingering for the G chord, so that I'd leave my pinkie free to reach the A note.