Lauren Bateman teaches a timed drill for faster chord changes: pick two chords, strum one change per beat for one minute, and count how many you complete. Increase metronome speed by 2-3 bpm weekly, aiming for 100 bpm. Practice recordings included at 40, 60, 80, and 100 bpm.
Welcome back. What we're going to talk about in this lesson is a very particular exercise that can become a very important part of your practice routine. So for most guitar players, what they really want to do is they want to be able to strum along and play with their favorite songs. The thing that gets in the way is that they learn chords, but their chord changes aren't quick enough. So it's really hard to play along with the music at the right tempo in time. So usually what I do with students is we'll start with the chords, and as we're learning them, we'll keep the strumming patterns really simple. You might just be doing one strum per chord, but this way, we can at least play in time. But the key is to get these chord changes as fast as possible, as quickly as possible, because then you can have more fun with your guitar, and. And you can make the strumming patterns a little bit more intricate. So what I do with my students is we keep track of chord changes, and we pick two chords at a time, and we will strum. So if I do E minor and D, I'll strum my first chord, and then I'll switch to my second chord, D, and I'll strum again. That's two chord changes. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So forth and so on. And we count. Now, the first time I do this with my students is we time for one minute, and we count how many chord changes we can make. And usually that first time through, people are sometimes lucky if they get, like, a dozen. All right. It really depends on how dexterous your hands are. So don't worry if you start off and your numbers are really low. Everyone's numbers start really low. What we're going to do is we're going to write that down on our cord practice sheet so that the next week, we're going to check back in and. And we're gonna try and make sure that we can do more than we did the week before. That's the goal. The goal is to each and every week get progressively quicker and quicker until we get to the ultimate goal, which is 100 beats per minute. Now, since this exercise focuses on speed, we're not gonna be worrying so much about the sound of the chord. So if you're switching and you hear a lot of this.
I'm totally fine with that. Because we're not focusing on how clean the cords are, we can do that separately. This exercise is about speed. So I really want you to work on getting these fingers on the fretting hand to move as quickly as possible. As long as your fingers are landing on the right frets and the right strings, that's fine by me. If your fingers start landing on the wrong strings or in the wrong frets, then you're going too fast. You need to slow it down a little bit. And all we're going to do is we're going to increase the speed of the metronome by like two or three beats at a time and we're going to slowly build our way up. So maybe the first week you start at 12, but maybe the next week you double your speed and you're at 24. And the following week you double your speed again and you're at like 48 or 50. The goal is to progressively get better and better each week until we hit that goal of 100 beats per minute. So you're going to have to do some legwork on your own. But I did record videos of myself practicing a lot of the chord changes at 40, 60, 80, and 100 beats per minute so that you could play along with me. Sometimes it's easier to play along with someone than with a metronome. But in between those speeds, you're going to have to work on your own to get it up. So pick two chords at a time. E minor D, e minor D. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. One strum per chord and each chord counts is a one count. All right? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Now how much should you practice these chord changes? As much as possible. I would say at least a minute per chord change. So if you've only got five minutes to practice, then all you're gonna be doing is practicing chord changes. Because you need to practice these non stop until you get them fast enough. Because this is the thing that holds students, students back in the beginning from having fun quickly. So the faster we can get these chord changes going, the more fun we can have with our guitar, because now we can start playing songs and doing strumming patterns that are a lot more fun. So work hard, get each of your chord changes up to 100 beats per minute, and I'll see you in the next video.
