Hey, how you doing? Justin here. Today we're gonna check out the weak-fingered
'G' chord, it's basically a two-finger 'G' chord, using just your 3rd & 4th fingers.
For many of you, you'll gonna find it a little bit tricky, and that's okay, but for
chord changes involving 'C', 'A-minor' and 'F', it's a really really useful chord
grip to get under your fingers. Many times the other fingerings for 'G' chord will be
better but when this one works, it really works, so it's definitely one to check out,
and it's great for developing little bit of independence there with your little
finger, so let's check out how to do it. So this is what the chord looks like, it
is literally, your 3rd finger on the third fret of the thickest string, and your
little finger on the third fret of the thinnest string; just those two fingers,
the other two, you don't normally like splay them out like that; they probably
just gonna hang around but I didn't want you to get confused and think I was adding
some other notes, so that's the fingering; just those two fingers. So the first thing
is, it's gonna be a bit of an awkward stretch for many of you; it's fairly
comfortable for me now right-handed - left-handed is a different story, but let
me take you through what's going on, so 3rd finger, third fret, thickest string
leaning over to mute the fifth string, so we shouldn't hear the fifth string at all.
Little finger just down on the third fret of the thinnest string; all of the other notes
should be ringing clear. Now, a couple of things that you probably likely to find -
if you put your 3rd finger down first, and then your little finger, you're likely
to pull the 3rd finger down a little bit, and when you do that - sounds pretty
horrible, so one of the challenges you're gonna have is, putting the 3rd finger down
and leaving it exactly where it should, while you put the little finger down, okay?
So that's challenge number one. Another way around it, is to make sure you put
your little finger down first and then reach out with the 3rd finger, again,
you got to be careful at this point, not to push up with the little finger, 'cause if
you push up the little finger, again you're gonna have a few problems; little finger
will mute the second string and bend the note out of tune. So one of the challenges
here, is to trying and get the fingers to be ready and to go down where they need
to - in the air, you know, talking about air changes, we've looked at previously.
Now, I mentioned already that it's a great chord to go to from a 'C' chord, so you
can see if we go 'C' to 'G', using 2nd and 3rd fingers, there's a lot of movement
there; the whole kind of hand has to move shape or move where it's at. Where is to
3rd and 4th fingers, you can see there's really very little movement at all
required once you get this chord change right, so to start off with, you wanna be
just working on getting the shape together but as soon as you can, once you can play
it; you wanna start working on, just going from the 'C' chord, lift it up just
a little bit and move your 3rd finger over little finger down, and change to
that 'G' chord. This is the most common chord progression that uses, or that you
know, why it's effective to use this chord fingering, so it's a really good thing to
practice, I'm gonna put it in your practice routine for 'perfect fast changes', just
going 'C' chord to this 'G' chord and working on it over and over again; just
doing the practice, trying to, you can see that my fingers are just staying in the
air and then getting ready and dropping down. Of course, precision is just as
important, whilst it is with every other chord, you wanna get on right and close to
the fret; not like here, right back! Okay? You want them to be right up next to the
frets if you can. Just really slowly doing this practice, even without strumming,
it's gonna be a good thing, but of course, the best thing is 'perfect fast changes',
so 'C' chord, nice slow strum; mute; get the fingers ready; drop them down; strum;
you can check that the fifth string is muted, if you need to; just be careful of
that; watching that 3rd finger pulling down, or little finger pulling up; that's
why, you're gonna try and get them in position to go down at the same time.
Another great change to work on is a 'A-minor' to the weak-finger 'G'. You can
see there's very very little movement there; little finger is kind of, almost
waiting to go here; it's only got to move that little bit. I'm making it look
kind of easier. I know that this ain't gonna be easy for most of you, when you
start doing it, it's gonna be a struggle; I know, I've got, I did my left-handed
practice this very morning in it, where certainly it didn't feel easy, at all! So
'A-minor' to weak-finger 'G' is a good one to practice; 'F' as well. You can see 'F'
to 'G' here; this fingering, requires a lot less movement than this one. As soon
as I do that one, the whole arm and hand position has to change, whereas this one
to the weak-finger 'G', you know, 'C', 'A-minor', 'F', 'G', they're real common
chords together, so you can start to see why this weak-finger 'G' is such a useful
grip. When you are practicing this, do work on getting that air change and
avoiding pulling down on the strings, so you know, if you start pulling the strings
out of tune, it really doesn't sound great and kind of defeats the purpose of having
this different fingering. When it comes to choosing what fingering you wanna use, you
probably gonna use the one that you can find easiest. Now, right now, the fingers
2 and 3 one will be the easiest because you've done it more, and this weak-finger
'G' will feel a lot more effort, so what you wanna do is to put a decent chunk of
effort into practicing the weak-finger 3 and 4 chord, so that the one that you choose
in the spur of the moment is the most effective one; the one that requires the
least amount of hand movement. The choice is to which one you do, really is gonna
boil down to one that feels the most comfortable in the moment, and the only
way to get this one comfortable, is gonna be repetition and practice, so really give
it a good go, especially when it comes to the songs, you wanna find some songs that
are good ones for using the weak-finger 3 and 4 chord; 'Dreams' by Fleetwood Mac is
the obvious one 'cause it's just 'F' to 'G', the whole way through, so it's a
really great one, just, I mean it's a beautiful song but a great one to be
working on for your practice as well. As usual, if you've got any questions about
this or any other segment of this lesson, do let me know in the comments on the
website; I do try an answer every single comment, if I can. So, let's move on and
check out another chord.