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Beginner Guitar Chords – Handling Chord Changes

As a beginner guitar player, learning to play individual chords is one thing. Learning to change chords quickly, e.g. when playing a song is another matter entirely. Here, I’m going to give a couple of tips for helping you learn to switch chords faster, and have a couple of exercises in a PDF file that you can try out.

When you first start out playing the guitar as a beginner, there are various basic open chords that you usually learn to play. However, even when you’ve persuaded your fingers to form these various different chord shapes, the next problem is changing from one chord to another – it can seem to take ages to move your fingers from one chord shape to the next, and this can be extremely frustrating, especially if you’re trying to learn to play a song.

Here are some general tips for helping you get better at making those guitar chord changes faster:

• Practise Regular Strumming: If you’re going to practise changing between chords, the first thing is to practise getting an even rhythm going with your right (strumming) hand. To do this, just form a chord with your left hand (e.g. C Major), and keep it held down. Then count ‘1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4,..’ aloud slowly and evenly, and as you count each beat, strum with a downstroke with your right hand. A metronome can help with getting this strumming regular, which leads me to the next point..
• Use a Metronome: A metronome is a very important gadget to use when learning the guitar, as it will help you develop a steady rhythm, and keep to the beat. Using a metronome, slow the beat right down to something really slow, say 60 bpm (beats per minute), or maybe even slower.
• Pick just a few chords to practise with: start out just with trying to change between a couple of chords, not all of the ones that you can form. Concentrate on just changing between these two, say C major and G Major.
• Try and form the whole shape at once: One of the keys to changing chords faster, is to try and form the next chord shape almost ‘in the air’, and try and aim to bring all the fingers down on the strings together, rather than positioning each finger individually. This is difficult to do straight away, but it’s what you need to aim for with practise. If you’re doing slow downstrums, you have the time between beat 4 of one bar, and beat 1 of the next to shift from one chord to the next. Aim to get all your fingers in position for the next chord before bringing them down on the strings, between beats 4 & 1.
• Find your starting speed: Experiment with the speed setting on the metronome, to find out the speed at which you can do this change between these 2 chords at the moment. It may be 60 bpm, 50bpm, or slower, it doesn’t matter. Just aim for a regular strumming rhythm with your right hand, and try to keep the rhythm at the same tempo when making the change.
• Slowly increase the speed: as you practise this particular change, you’ll find that you can gradually play it faster and faster. Don’t rush it though, and only up the metronome tempo when you can play the change smoothly on the current speed setting. Keep a record of your current speed settings, and over time you’ll see that it’s improving, i.e. you can change chords faster now.
• Don’t work harder than you need to: An important principle of guitar playing is often to try and keep finger movement down to a minimum. An example of this principle here, is that if the first chord you’re forming has finger positions in common with the next chord, it may be possible to just move one or two fingers to form the next chord. An example of this is going from C Major to A minor – fingers 1 & 2 can remain where they are for C Major, just finger 3 needs to move. This is Exercise 1 below.

OK, with those tips in mind, here are a couple of exercises for trying them out. These are the chords I’m going to use in these 5 exercises, here’s a chord chart:

These are just some fairly regular open chords. The fingering I suggest is shown underneath each chord. If you’re not familiar with them, then take some time to practice forming these shapes individually, before trying the exercises linking them together.

Here’s exercise 1:

This is changing from C major to A minor. Try and keep fingers 1 and 2 held down from the C major chord, then change to A minor just by moving your 3rd finger from the 5th to the 3rd strings, which is one of the tips given above.

And now exercise 2:

This is going from E minor to A minor. Fingers 2 & 3 keep the same shape together when used in these two chords, just on different strings. So try and practice the principle of forming the chord ‘in the air’, when you bring them across from strings 4 & 5 to strings 3 & 4, and vice versa.

Here’s exercise 3:

This is going from A7 to D major. The D major chord forms a ‘triangle’ shape. On the chord chart (above), I’ve indicated to use finger 1 & 2 for the A7 chord. As you shift across from A7 to D major, try and keep these fingers in the same relative shape, they should just move across into their positions in the D major chord, you just bring in the 3rd finger behind to complete the shape.

Exercise 4 is here:

This is going from C major to G major. Notice that for G Major, I’m suggesting using fingers 2 & 3 for the lower 2 strings, and finger 4 for the top string. This might be slightly different to what you’re used to, but the point of this fingering for G Major is that fingers 2 & 3 slide easily across from their positions in C major right over to strings 5 & 6, then just bring in your pinky (finger 4) on the top string to complete the G chord.

Finally, exercise 5:

This has two variants of the F chord, the first is F7M (or F maj7), the second is the regular F major chord. F can sometimes seem a little tricky, as you need to hold down strings 1 & 2 with your 1st finger together (a 2 finger barre). The F7M shape here has the top string open, so doesn’t have this difficulty.

The F and C shapes are fairly similar, so again, try to practise the ‘chord in the air’ principle.

Finally, here’s a link to a PDF document with all of these exercises, that you can print out for practising with:

Right click on the link and choose ’save as’ to download it. Hopefully this will help you practise changing between chords, and get faster at doing it!

For more beginner guitar lessons, the Jamorama and Learn & Master Guitar courses are specifically aimed at taking players from a total novice level, and leading them up to a good standard of playing guitar. The Jamplay site also has some great beginner guitar video sessions.

Take a look at our Jamorama review, Learn & Master Guitar review and Jamplay review pages for more info on these courses.

Chris

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G3 Live – Red House Blues

I’ve had the excellent G3 Live album (Joe Satriani / Steve Vai / Eric Johnson) on my ipod for a long time now, but just the other day, this track from that album came up on a playlist I had on, and I was really struck with the sheer virtuosity of these 3 players. It made me listen to the track over & over a few times!

I found this video clip of them performing this track live:

It doesn’t seem to be quite the same version as I have on my CD, but I guess that’s the nature of a live performance. Still great to watch though.

They start off with a fairly traditional blues, but really let it rip on the solos.

I find it very inspiring to listen to and watch players like these, it really motivates me with my own guitar playing, trying to pick out some of their licks and solo lines. I particularly liked this track, as it showed what they can do with a regular blues tune.

If you’re feeling similarly inspired after watching this, there are quite a few Joe Satriani & Steve Vai guitar tab books available.

Chris

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Using ‘Pedal Notes’ For Modes – Part II

In a previous post on this topic, I talked about using pedal notes (constant sounding low notes) while playing the major scale modes, to try and hear the characteristic sound of the mode.

In that post, I suggested playing the pedal note tone on one of the lower strings, while playing the mode pattern on the upper strings, tuning the lower string as appropriate. This is a good technique to learn, as you can use it when practicing anywhere.

Here, I’m going to continue on from the previous post, detail the other modes, and there’s an MP3 file with the pedal notes, which you can use to practice with.

The C Major Scale

As with last time, we’re going to look at modes derived from the major scale, and for our examples, we’ll use the C Major scale, as follows:

The modes of the major scale are produced by using exactly the same notes as the major scale, but starting on a different root note. This means that the relationship between the consecutive notes in the scale is different, since the intervals between them aren’t the same as the regular major scale.

And it is this different interval pattern that gives each of the modes their own distinctive sound.

The Pedal Notes

The important thing to focus on with these modes is their sound relative to their root note. If you just play the different mode patterns given below on their own, then because the scale notes are exactly those of the C Major scale, it’s going to sound exactly like C Major.

This is where the ‘pedal notes’ come into play. The following MP3 track is fairly basic, but has each of the different notes of the C Major scale (C, D, .., B) being played in turn, for about 30 sec on each note. Right click on the link & select ‘Save As’ to download it.

Have a look through the info below, then use this track to play along with each of the modes in turn. The track starts with pedal note #1 (C), for playing the first mode pattern (C Ionian). Each time the pedal note moves up, you should move on to playing the next pattern (e.g. D Dorian, E Phrygian, etc, as described below).

There are 7 different notes in the major scale, so there are 7 different major scale modes, below are charts for each one. All the patterns use the 8th fret C Major scale pattern.

Ionian Mode

The first mode feels like a bit of a cheat – it’s exactly C Major! That is, another way of saying the ‘C Major Scale’ is to say ‘C Ionian Mode’.

The root notes of the scale (C) are shown in blue, the other scale tones in yellow. The key on the diagram shows some flattened (green), and sharpened (orange) tones, however, in the Ionian mode, you’ll notice neither of these appear.

This is because I mean that the notes are flattened / sharpened relative to the regular major scale for that key, since we’re showing C Major, there are no flattened / sharpened notes.

The numbers on each note just indicate the number of that note in the scale (2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc).

Play this pattern along with the first pedal note on the track (C), it should have a fairly familiar sound.

Dorian Mode

Moving on to the first ‘real’ mode, the Dorian mode is built from the second note of the major scale. Since we’re using the C Major scale notes, the second note is D, so the blue root note in the following diagram shows where D occurs and the Dorian mode starts.

Looking at this diagram, notice the 3rd & 7th notes in the D Dorian mode. These are marked green (and prefixed with ‘b’), meaning they are flattened by a semitone (1 fret) from the regular 3rd & 7th notes that occur when you play a regular D major scale.

The 3rd note of the D major scale is F# (e.g. on the guitar, the 5th string, 9th fret). In D Dorian mode, this note is flattened to F (e.g. on the guitar, the 5th string, 8th fret), which is why this is coloured green on the chart.

Similarly with the 7th note, in the regular D major scale, this note is C# (4th string, 11th fret), in D Dorian mode, this is flattened to C (4th string, 10th fret).

Why is this relevant? Well, the sound characteristic of a scale or mode is determined by the intervals between the notes. If you were to play a regular D major scale starting from the D on the 6th string, 10th fret, the 3rd note would be F# (5th string, 9th fret), and it would have a major sound.

In D Dorian mode, the 3rd note is F (5th string, 8th fret), which gives it a minor sound.

The Dorian mode is very similar to the Aeolian mode (see below), the difference between them is that the Aeolian mode also has a flattened 6th note.

This gives the Dorian mode its character, which you can hear if you play this along with the 2nd pedal note on the track (D). When playing it, try to emphasize the fact that it’s centered on D as the root. You can do this by playing notes from this pattern that start from or resolve to D (the blue notes in the diagram).

As well as playing the straight scale pattern, try and make up D-centered licks and phrases to play over the D pedal tone note.

The Dorian mode has been said to have a ‘jazzy’ feel, partly because of the 6th note, but make your own mind up when playing it over the D pedal note.

Phrygian Mode

Moving along, the 3rd mode, based on the 3rd note of the major scale is the Phrygian mode. Here’s E Phrygian mode:

There are lots of flattened tones here, in particular the 3rd note is flattened, so it’s a minor sounding mode. Also the 2nd & 6th notes are flattened, which give it a quite distinctive sound (some say ‘Spanish’ sounding..).

Play this over the 3rd note on the track (E).

Lydian Mode

The next mode is a major mode, built on the 4th note of the scale, here’s F Lydian mode:

It’s a major mode, because the 3rd note in the mode is not flattened (i.e. so from the root R to the 3rd is a major 3rd).

The only note in it that’s different from the major scale is the 4th, which is sharpened. In the regular F major scale, the 4th note is B-flat (4th string, 8th fret). In F Lydian mode, the 4th note is B (4th string, 9th fret).

This difference gives the Lydian mode its own quality, kind of ‘loose’ or ’spacey’. Try experimenting with this pattern over the 4th pedal note on the MP3 track, F.

Mixolydian Mode

From the 5th note of the major scale, we get another major sounding mode, which is Mixolydian. Here’s G Mixolydian:

Looking at the chart, only the 7th note is different from the regular major scale. In G Mixolydian, the 7th note is F (3rd string, 10th fret), whereas in regular G major, it would be F# (3rd string, 11th fret).

This characteristic makes the Mixolydian mode perfect for jazz/blues solos over dominant 7th major chords.

For example, in G major, the dominant 7th I chord is G7. The 7th note which forms part of G7 is the note F, which is exactly the flattened 7th tone of this G Mixolydian pattern.

So, you could use a G Mixolydian pattern to solo over a G7 chord. If you used a regular G major scale, you’d have to be sure to miss out the regular 7th note, F#, as it would clash with the flattened 7th note of the G7 chord.

Play this mode over the 5th note on the MP3 track (G).

Aeolian Mode

The 6th mode is a minor mode, the Aeolian mode, here is A Aeolian:

Another name for this is the natural minor scale. It has a slight mournful / wistful sound, and works well over minor chord progressions in that key.

Try licks & phrases from this mode over the 6th pedal note on the track (A).

Locrian Mode

Finally, we get to the last mode, which is a rather strange one, the Locrian mode, built from the 7th note of the scale. Here’s B Locrian:

Looking at the diagram, the only notes that are unmodified from the regular B major scale are the root (B) and 4th (E).

The Locrian is a diminished mode, since the 3rd & 5th notes are flattened (amongst others). This gives it a very strange sound, which can be difficult to fit in over regular chords, although it can be said to have an ‘Eastern’ type sound.

Try playing this one over the last pedal note on the track, B.

So those are the seven modes derived from the major scale.

Grouping the Modes

In the sequence above, we’ve gone through the modes as they occur when going through the notes in the major scale.

However, it’s also useful to group them according to their overall character:

Major: Ionian, Lydian, Mixolydian

Minor: Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian

Diminished: Locrian

Looking at the modes this way will help you pick one for the type of music you’re playing, or the sound you want to create.

Experiment!

It can be very easy to get really absorbed in all the theory behind modes. While it’s good to understand where they come from, and how they’re formed, the most important thing is to actually hear for yourself how they sound.

Practice playing them over the appropriate pedal notes on the above track, and as I mentioned above, don’t just play the mode pattern up & down in sequence, but try and form licks & phrases which are centered around the particular root note of that mode. That way you’ll internalise the sound of the mode better.

Practising them over the pedal notes like this will also make it more likely that you’ll be able to automatically incorporate licks using them in your regular playing.

Also, don’t feel that you have to use every mode – only use the ones that sound good or useful to you in some musical context.

Further uses for the MP3 pedal mode track – if you load it up in Transcribe or Audacity, you can focus in on one of the pedal notes in particular, and have it loop round continuously on this pedal note. Alternatively, use the ‘transpose’ features of these programs to shift the track into another key entirely, so you can practice the modes from another key.

Further Info

For a much more in-depth treatment of modes and scales in general, check out the Guitar Scale Mastery course. In this course, the instructor, Craig Bassett will guide you through a series of lessons designed to help you understand and internalise scales, but most importantly, be able to incorporate them easily into your own playing and solos.

Read my review of this course here.

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The CAGED System For Learning Guitar Scales – Part II

In the last post on this topic (see Part I), we introduced the ‘CAGED’ system for memorising guitar scales, and showed the C, A and G scale patterns, using the C major scale as an example.

Now we’ll look at the other 2 patterns, E & D, and then look at the patterns overall, and see how they link together across the fretboard.

Here’s the ‘E’ scale shape for the C major scale:

The numbers on the notes are the scale degrees of those notes, for example, number ‘2′ represents the 2nd note in the scale (in the case of the C major scale here, this is the note ‘D’), ‘3′ represents the 3rd note (here it’s ‘E’), etc. The notes marked ‘R’ represent the root (first) note of the scale, in this case the ‘R’ notes represent the note ‘C’, as we’re looking at these patterns in the key of C major.

The notes coloured blue are the notes usually used to form that particular chord pattern, which are the root (R), third (3) and fifth (5) notes of the scale.

In this ‘E’ pattern, you can see that the notes marked in blue form an E-major shape barre chord, positioned at the 8th fret.

Here’s the final pattern, the ‘D’ scale shape for the C major scale:

The lower root note (R) is the note ‘C’ on the 4th string, 10th fret, and the notes marked in blue form a D-shape barre chord, positioned at this 10th fret.

Playing this particular pattern completely involves a little bit of finger stretching, I usually slide up from note ‘3′ to ‘4′ on the 3rd string with my first finger, before ascending to the top notes of the pattern.

Finally, here’s a diagram showing all of the scale patterns, starting with the ‘C’ shape pattern at the 3rd fret, moving through all of the ‘CAGED’ shapes up to the ‘D’ shape at the 10th fret:

Hopefully this gives you an idea of how the patterns come together to cover the fretboard.

When learning the patterns, I would practice them individually at first, and try to remember each pattern based on the notes of the chord shape for that pattern.

Then, you can start to link the different patterns. For example, looking at the ‘E’ and ‘D’ shape diagrams above, you can see that the upper ‘3′ and ‘7′ notes of the ‘E’ pattern from the 9th fret are exactly the same notes as the lower ‘3′, ‘7′ notes from the ‘D’ pattern at the 9th fret.

So you could start off playing the ‘E’ shape pattern, but then after playing the ‘2′ note on the 3rd string, 7th fret, slide this first finger up to the 9th fret, and then continue on in the ‘D’ shape pattern.

Linking the patterns like this is essential for being able to play scales up and down the fretboard, so it’s good to practice.

Once you’ve learned the CAGED scale patterns in one key (e.g. C major, as shown here), playing in different keys is just a matter of shifting the pattern up to a different fret. For example, take the ‘E’ shape pattern above. Right now, because this starts with the ‘R’ root note at the 8th fret on the 6th string, this is a C major scale. However, if you shift this pattern up 2 frets, by starting at the 10th fret on the 6th string, this is now a D major scale.

So if you’ve learned all of the CAGED patterns up across the fretboard, you should be able to play the scales in any key, by locating the patterns on the right root note.

To learn more about the CAGED system for guitar scales, and how you can apply this to lead guitar soloing, take a look at the Jamorama Lead Guitar course, which is based on this method, and gives a clear and detailed step by step guide to all of the CAGED scale patterns.

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The CAGED System For Learning Guitar Scales – Part I

You may at some point have come across the term ‘CAGED’ in relation to guitar scales, and wondered exactly what it meant.

‘CAGED’ is a method for helping you memorise different scale patterns on the guitar fretboard, and how they link together. If you’ve ever tried to learn scale patterns over the whole fretboard, and found them all blending into one, or had trouble remembering the shapes, the CAGED method could help you out.

Basically, the letters of the word ‘CAGED’ relate to the different chords associated with those notes, in the regular open position, and a scale pattern is built around that chord shape. The shapes also fit together on the fretboard, so that you can move up or down the neck going from the shape for one chord letter to the adjacent letter’s shape.

In this post, we’ll look at the first few CAGED scale patterns for the C major scale.

For example, let’s take the first chord in the CAGED sequence, which is C. The regular open C chord is formed on the first 3 frets of the guitar, with the root note of the chord on the 3rd fret, 5th string.

The following diagram shows how the C major scale is formed around the open C chord shape.

The notes coloured blue are the notes usually played as part of the open C major chord, i.e. the 1st (or root), 3rd and 5th of the C major scale.

The notes marked yellow are the other notes of the C major scale, the number indicates their scale degree, that is their position within the scale.

You can use this diagram to learn this particular major scale pattern. To recall the scale pattern, just remember the shape of the open C major chord, and this should help you remember it better.

In a similar way, there are major scale shapes that are built around the other CAGED chords. The ‘A’ shape, for example, is built around the regular open A major chord shape.

or in fact, in this case it’s the A-shape barre chord, positioned at the 3rd fret.

The G scale shape is based on the open G major chord shape, moved up to the 8th fret:

All of these shapes link together, so that with practice, you can start off playing a scale in the C-shape pattern, then move up to the A-shape and G-shape patterns.

To learn more about the CAGED system for guitar scales, and how you can apply this to lead guitar soloing, take a look at the Jamorama Lead Guitar course, which is based on this method, and gives a clear step by step guide to all of the CAGED scale patterns.

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Using ‘Pedal Notes’ To Get The Sound of Modes

Much has been written on the topic of the modes of a scale, and how to play and improvise using them. In this post, I’m going to show how using ‘pedal notes’ can help you hear the overall sound of a particular mode.

If you take the C-major scale notes, starting on C as the root note, then progressing through the rest of the scale, you have the notes:  C   D   E   F   G   A  B  C.  This is shown on the following fretboard diagram:

Now take the bottom (6th) E string, and tune it down first to D (down 2 frets/semitones), then down another 2 frets/semitones to C. Make sure it’s in tune with the root note of the C-major scale, which is the 3rd fret on the 5th (A) string.

Now, play the bottom (6th) string, so that it sounds this low C note. As this note is sounding, play the C-major scale, as shown above, starting on the 5th string, 3rd fret. The low C note on the 6th string is the ‘pedal note’, and you can get a sense of the overall sound of the C-major scale notes against it, it gives the C-major scale notes a sort of ‘tonal context’.

Now if you take these notes of the C-major scale, and instead of starting on C, start the scale on D, you get the notes D E F G A B C D. This is known as D Dorian Mode. In simple terms, the D Dorian mode uses the same notes as C-Major, it just starts and ends on a different note (D), and so has a different interval structure than the major scale.

In particular, since the 3rd note of the D Dorian mode is F, this interval D -> F is a minor third, so the overall character of the Dorian mode is minor. This revised diagram shows the D Dorian mode notes, starting and ending on the note D.

Now you can use the same ‘pedal note’ technique with the D Dorian mode. Take the bottom (6th) string, which you had tuned down to a low C. Now, tune it up by 2 frets/semitones, to a low D. Check the tuning, it should sound the same note as the open 4th (D) string, although it will be an octave lower.

Sound the bottom (6th) string, and as this low D note sounds, play the D Dorian mode as shown in the 2nd diagram above, starting on the 5th string, 5th fret (D). This should help to give you a sense of the sound or ‘tonal context’ of the D Dorian mode.

Using this ‘pedal note’ technique with different scale modes can give you a much better sense of their overall sound than if you just played the mode notes by themselves. It can be used on an acoustic guitar, but I think works better on an electric, with a longer sustain when you sound the low pedal note.

A similar technique is to record a keyboard sounding a low D, and play the same D Dorian mode pattern over it.

Obviously this can be applied to other modes. For example, if you now tune your bottom (6th) string up to it’s regular E note, you could play the E Phrygian Mode, by starting off from E (4th string, 2nd fret), instead of D.

To get a much deeper understanding of scales and modes, the Guitar Scale Mastery course has a very thorough treatment of scales, intervals, their relationships, and more importantly, how you can actually use them in your guitar playing and solos. This course also has some audio tracks called ‘Guitar Scale Activators’, which are similar in principle to the pedal notes outlined above, to help you get the ‘tonal context’ of different scales. See our review here.

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