Hey, how're you doing? Justin here and today I'm going to share with you
what I think is probably the most important exercise in this entire course.
It is the One Minute Changes.
We're going to pick two chords and change between them as many times
as we can in one minute. Sounds pretty simple, and actually
it is a relatively simple exercise, but the benefits are huge.
As I mentioned, the first hurdle that beginners have is dealing with
the finger pain. It's generally pretty horrible for a couple of weeks
and gradually gets better.
Should be pretty much gone after a couple of months, if not sooner.
The next challenge is making the chord changes fast enough
to be able to play a song. You can't really play a song
just with one chord.
There might be a song with just one chord,
but most songs have multiple chords so, learning to change between the chords
is the thing that you need to be able to do to play any songs.
It's also, the fact that we count the changes in the One Minute Changes exercise
is a fantastic motivational tool because you actually get to see your progress.
There's no question about it. Sometimes, you learn the guitar
is like: "oh, I've really got better, I've done all this practice,"
but with One Minute Changes, because you're writing the number of changes down
each practice session, you can see yourself go from,
"I did 5 changes this minute, and the next day
I did 10 and the next day I did 25", and... it's quantifiable.
It's a really fantastic motivational tool, so I'll definitely encourage you to be
using the practice routine generator on my site, or the One Minute Changes
counter in the App, or at the very least a piece of paper and a pen
and writing down how many chord changes you do with each practice session.
So, I've already given you the idea. Right now we've only got
two chords to change between, which is the A chord, and the D chord.
So, the first thing I recommend you do, is just actually make
the chord changes a few times. So, we do an A to D today.
it's the only two chords that we know. So, just remembering to use the
anchor finger there.
Just trying to get the chord nice and fresh before
we go into doing the One Minute Changes.
The object of the exercise of One Minute Changes,
is to do fast chord changes.
They're allowed to be a little bit sloppy.
I know this might seem a little bit weird, but the accuracy of the
finger placement isn't the key thing.
They should be on the right string, and in the right fret,
but the rest is kind of forgivable. If the notes aren't quite ringing out
as clearly as you'd like, that's ok.
That's why we do the Chord Perfect Practice as well.
So, Chord Perfect Practice is about making the chord sound really good;
One Minute Changes is about making the changes really fast.
And if you practice those two things separately, after a few weeks,
and you'll find they start to come together,
and you'll find that you're doing very fast, and accurate chord changes.
But in the initial stages, those two things might seem a little bit distant.
So, you're doing your One Minute Changes and you're like: "oh, these chords
aren't ringing out right, it's not good enough."
It's ok.
If you've got any doubt, go and watch my Left-handed Practice,
the Nitsuj lessons where I'm starting out doing these chord changes.
It's a bit of a fumble fest.
lots of duff notes coming out and that's totally alright.
So, once you've got your fingers, then kind of know roughly
where they're going to go, you're going to hit start on the timer,
and then you're gonna go do as many as you can. You're going to strum
each chord and you're gonna count each time you do a chord change.
I usually count the first one as well, so I'd hit start and I go...
One...
Two...
Three...
Four...
Five...
Six...
Going through it and counting out loud, so that you can count your changes.
Now, ideally, what we're looking for is a flow.
So, even if it's real slow...
trying to get like a flow going from one chord to the next,
just so you've got like a pulse to it, because once you got a pulse
you can start trying to speed it up.
Ideally, like the long term thing I think is that you want to get
to sixty (60) changes in a minute. That's a chord change every second.
For sure you won't be doing that in your first week, ok?
But if you can do sixty chord changes of a particular pair of chords,
I'd say you don't need to practice it any more. Ok?
So that's the object. To pass the first grade, I would usually say
to get through this lesson, I'd say that you want to get up
to around thirty (30) changes in a minute.
Ok? So: one, two, three, four,
five, etc... up to thirty. If you can get thirty changes
done in a minute, that's enough to move on to the next lesson.
To pass the grade out is thirty, but really sixty is the target that
you want to try and reach with all the chord changes.
You're gonna find some chord changes harder than others.
This week we've only got one, but as we move on further down the course
and we introduce more chords, there are more different changes,
you wanna work on the ones that you're finding the hardest.
Let me know in the comments how you're getting on with this,
how many chord changes did you get through the first time
you had a go at doing your One Minute Changes,
and how fast did you progress?
It's a really fun thing, definitely, if you're feeling "oh, I can't do it
I'm hopeless," go and watch me try it left-handed
the first time. You'll see me struggle with it as well.
It's dead normal, just stick at it. Ok? That's the thing.
A little practice often is the way forward in these beginner stages.