Hey, how you doing? Justin back with you today to talk a little bit more about
'F' chord and making chord changes to it. Some of you will be finding 'F' chord,
kind of, playable, and be itching to move on a step, which will be making chord
change to the 'F' chord, some of you will still be really struggling, which case,
I've got a few more tips for you from things that I've been learning myself in
my NITSUJ practice, and the first thing of those, is whether to put down the fingers
first or the barre first? And I think what I've uncovered is, actually the best
way for me, at this point, is to put the barre down roughly, then put the fingers
down, and then readjust the barre. Okay? So, definitely putting the fingers down first
and then the barre, I think, has got a lot of merit, and that's why I'm not gonna
change the previous lesson about doing that, but once you've got the rough shape
of it, what seems to be happening for the actual chord progressions, when I'm
starting to alternate 'F' chord with another chord, is that I'm putting the
barre down, roughly, then putting the fingers down where they should go and
concentrating on their position, and then readjusting the barre, to make sure that
it goes in the right place. Now, this looks real easy for me, and I've been
playing this 'F' chord for probably near on forty years now, which's a bit scary,
but, you know, for me it's pretty easy this way; if you watch my videos doing it
left-handed, it's definitely not that easy. I know what you're going through, okay?
I know 'F' chord is difficult! Some of you are gonna find it a lot easy to put the
barre down first, and then, put the fingers down. Others are gonna find that it's easy to
put the fingers down first, and then the barre, and both of those ways are totally
fine, and this this third method now, which is, roughly putting the barre down,
then put the fingers down, and then adjust the barre before you before you do that
final strum. All of those things are okay, so experiment a bit and see what's working
well for you; that's my only tip really, on the 'F' chord, other than just practicing
it. For me, I'm feeling like I'm getting the 'F' chord now in the lefty practice;
not every time, but I can kind of do it, but I'm finding chord changes very difficult.
I have started doing chord changes though, so, if you're at the point where you can,
kind of, do the 'F' chord, I would recommend starting now to experiment with some chord
changes. The most obvious one will be 'C' to 'F' chord, 'cause those two chords get
played together a lot. So, just practicing going from the 'C' chord, then putting the
'F' chord down, either fingers first and the barre, or whatever is working for you,
and give it a strum, and then, lift them all off and go to the 'C' chord, which you
shouldn't find too difficult, and then try and go to the 'F' chord, like that. 'F'
chord to 'G' chord is also a great one; using the 3rd & 4th fingers 'G', so either
going 'F' like this, and then trying to get those fingers separated, to the 'G',
and then, back to the 'F'...fingers, barre, there we go; then trying to do that air
change for the 'G' chord and put them down. Just take it up real slow, but
giving your fingers something to do in between the 'F' chord practice, so you're
not just doing 'F' and then taking the hand off, and then 'F'; try now changing to a
chord. 'A-minor' to 'F' is also a nice one [playing guitar]. Start to look at the way
your hand moves, the way your arm moves, because you, the more that you can observe
and be, kind of, an impartial observer of what you're doing, the more things you
notice. If you let the baggage of , like, "I've got to get it right, I've got to get
it right; I've got to get it faster"; all that stuff to be going on and cluttering
your mind space, you're not going to get the chord as good; so, you wanna be, kind
of, sitting back, almost observing someone else doing it, and taking note of what's
going on; see the way that your wrist moves; where's the pressure coming from;
what's hard about the 'F' chord? Definitely for me, one of the things that I've been
working on, when I've been doing the practice; I've been using the song, "Dreams",
by Fleetwood Mac, 'cause it's 'F' to 'G' all of the way through. I've been
experimenting with going 'F-major7' to 'G', for some of the song, then mini 'F' to 'G'
for some of the song, and then, full barre chord 'F' to 'G' for some of the song, but
the full barre chord 'F' to 'G', it's like, I'm lucky if I can get to the 'F' chord
within the barre and strum it before I have to panic-swap to the 'G' again, but
the practice of doing that is actually really helpful, and it's definitely
accelerating, how quickly I can reach the 'F' chord; so, once you've got the chord
and you can play it and you can get all of the notes sound, I would recommend starting
to work on doing a chord change as part of your, that, little two-minute practice on
the 'F' chord that you should be doing at the start of your, not quite the start,
but almost the start of your practice routine; you don't have to, but I would
recommend that, and it depends - we're all gonna be having different struggles on the
journey here with the 'F' chord; some of you, I know, from the comments that I can
see on the website, they're like, "Man, I can do the 'F' chord, it's so much easy to
do the big barre chord 'F' than the mini 'F'"; lucky you, man! That's cool! I'm
jealous, I'm finding the 'F', big 'F' chord, still quite a struggle, and many of you'll
be experiencing that too, if you are nailing it down, and you wanna start
incorporating it in the song straightaway, great! As soon as you're ready with the
'F' chord, you can start plugging it into songs, instead of using mini 'F', start
using big 'F' as soon as you can. The more you practice it, the better you're gonna
get at it; the sooner you can start working on real songs, with real chord changes,
that you need to use, that's where it's gonna become an effective tool, okay? It's
not something that you should just wanna practice forever before you start putting
in the songs; you wanna put it in the songs as soon as you possibly can, but for many
of you, that might not be yet - and that's okay too. You have to be forgiving yourself
and realize that 'F' is the big hurdle; it's still pretty early days - I've given
you this 'F' chord early in the course, so that you can be working on that and
developing your hand strength 'cause I think that's the most effective way of
getting to grips with that chord. So, to summarize, the first thing I would
recommend that you spend a little bit of time experimenting with the finger order
that you put them down; so either going fingers first then barre there, or barre
then fingers, or roughly the barre then the fingers, and then refine the barre
placement. They're all good; it's gonna be different for different people, so find
the one that works for you, but do experiment, and let me know in the
comments actually, which one's working for you 'cause it's just an interesting part
of the social experiment here to figure out what's easy for some and what's hard for
others. Do work on getting the chord changes as soon as you can, okay, so if
the chord is ready, start practicing doing the chord changes, and try and incorporate
it into a song, if you can! It will be difficult, you'll probably find that it
makes the chord all lumpy, but it will be worth it, to practice doing that too.