Hello, Justin here.
Welcome now to your first "1 Minute Changes".
Now, this is a little exercise I developed a long time ago
when I was teaching in a primary school and I couldn't get the kids to practice guitar.
So I made up a little exercise that was kind of a competition
to see who could make the most chord changes in one minute
and what was really weird was that they all practiced loads, really enjoyed it
and got really good at doing their chord changes.
So, I kinda took the idea and applied it to some older people and found
that it worked for them as well and then most...nearly....
...or in fact all of my beginner students over the last few years have used this technique
to get their chord changes faster because it's kinda the hardest thing.
If you thought maybe, you know, having a slight pain in your fingers playing these chords
was a little bit of a hard uphill battle, now the changing between the chords,
is really gonna cause you a bit of problems because that's actually the...
...probably the hardest step when you first start playing the guitar
is getting those chord changes. It's not that hard, it just takes practice.
So you gotta stick with it.
Now, what I'm gonna show you is a really, really kinda tried and tested method
for getting your chord changes faster.
So, what we're gonna do is, we're gonna pick a pair of chords.
We might do first, say, D and A.
First, as a first one. It doesn't really matter which ones you choose
but let's say D and A chord.
And we're gonna try and make as many changes between D and A
as we can in one minute.
So you need some sort of timer device, right?
I use the little countdown timer on my iPhone but you could use things like egg timer
or anything else that's got a countdown timer.
I'm sure there are countdown liners... countdown liners ...countdown TIMERS online
if you have a look around, if you did a google search I'm sure you'd find one.
So, maybe using something like that
and the idea would literally be that you have a look at your clock or your watch
and you go: "Right here, OK, it's starting...now!
(plays) 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12..."
...and you just keep going for a whole minute, trying to make as many possible changes as you can
in that time.
And when you have arrived at the end of that minute and you know how many you've done,
in your practice schedule, you write the number of changes that you made in the little box.
And this is really good now for your motivation
because you get to watch yourself improve.
Every time you're practicing you got a target
'cause you know: "Last time I practiced, well, I got like seven changes in a minute.
OK, I'm definitely gonna beat that this time. Alright, let's go for eight!"
You know, it's a really good idea to write it down in your practice schedule
and then compete with yourself. And a lot of it's kinda mental.
You gotta be pushing yourself, really trying to make it faster, trying everytime.
Have the mindset that you're going really, really as quick as possible.
Now, you can't make the chords kinda rubbish, right?
If the fingers are on the wrong strings, you know, then it's kinda not right
- or the wrong frets - but if the chord's not perfect, that's OK
'cause this exercise is about trying to get your fingers to move quickly.
That's the point of it.
So, if it's like it's not quite perfect, that's OK.
You can still count it.
Now, counting it: how to count it.
There's been quite a lot of debate about this.
I actually intended when I wrote this exercise in the first time I taught it online
that one cycle would be counted as one.
So if you went D to A and then back to D, that would be one.
And everytime you got back to D you'd count.
So you go: (plays) 1,2,3,4,etc.
Now, a lot of people kind of misconstrued that little bit and they thought it was:
(plays) 1,2,3,4,5,6...
Now, to tell the truth, it doesn't really matter which one you choose to use.
If you wanna do one whole cycle as counting one or if you wanna do...you know,
count it each time you change chords at all then that's OK. It's up to you.
As long as you keep using the same system it's fine.
Now, even though I originally said one complete cycle is one, I think, probably
it's a bit easier just everytime you change chords to make your count.
So you're going: (plays) 1,2,3,4,5,6...
So that's probably not a bad way to do it.
I reckon that might be slightly better but it doesn't really matter.
Now , what's your target?
Well, when you first start trying to do these 1 Minute Changes, you'll probably find
that you get between six and eight or nine, that'd be pretty damn good actually,
eight or nine would be the high end of how many changes people get
in their first 1 Minute Changes.
So, have a little go at picking each one of the combinations now,
so it'll be D and A, D and E and A and E
and take each one for one minute, see how many you can get, write it in you practice routine.
The target is 30 complete changes or if you're counting everytime you change chords
you're aiming for 60 which is one chord change a second.
Now when you get to that sort of speed you should be able to play your songs
fairly comfortably. So, that's the reason for that.
It's really speed, speed. Trying to get those fingers moving faster, that's the whole picture, dudes,
and so lots and lots of work on this and it will lead to good things. I promise you.
So, get into that. Practice hard and I'll see you for another lesson very soon.
There's one more thing I wanna tell you about
which is how to join me when we've gotta play something together
and I'll do that usually by counting in.
So normally I'll just count you a "3,4" and then we would start together on count 1.
That's the normal way of doing things.
Sometimes count a whole bar, like "1,2,3,4" and then we start.
I think that's a little bit long-winded, especially in this sort of situation.
So, often I'll just count like - I'll go: "3,4" (plays) and then we'd start playing at the same time.
So, just watch out for that "3,4" count-along.
OK, let's check out what's in your practice routine.