Hey, how you doing?
Justin back with you to learn another chord.
This time we're going to check out how to play the A chord.
Now, it's worth bearing in mind at this point,
if you're new to the whole guitar thing,
that you're gonna find these chords really difficult the first little while.
Okay? The first week or two, it's gonna feel really impossible.
Like, "I can't do it. This is just too hard.
I'm not built for playing guitar".
Pretty much everyone feels like that, and that's okay.
Don't really worry about it. It just takes a bit of perseverance,
making sure you stick with your practice,
and practicing, hopefully, the right things.
So, let's go and have a look at our A chord.
So, here is our A chord.
You can see that we've got three fingers, all crammed into the same fret.
Now, I wanna point out, that the traditional way
of learning A chord, is like this:
all three fingers, 1, 2, 3, all in a line.
But you can probably already see that 1st finger there,
is very, very far away from the fret.
So, to make that note sound clear,
you'd have to press really, really, really, really hard.
And that will make your finger hurt.
So, the fingering that I teach, it's got some other advantages, as well,
but you can see straight away now that these two fingers:
fingers two and fingers three, are right up next to the fret.
And 1st finger sneaks in between them,
and is in fact, a lot closer to the fret,
than any of the fingers were, than even the middle finger was here,
in the traditional fingering.
It's also much better for, like, changing to the D chord.
Look, 1st finger can stay in the same place,
when we're moving to a D chord,
and stay on the same string when we're move to an E chord.
Which is gonna be the next chord we learn.
So, lots of advantages to learning A chord this way.
If you've learned it that way in the past,
and you're redoing your Beginners Guitar Course,
then it's not a terrible thing to learn it that way.
That's how I learned to play an A chord,
but I think you're much better off learning this way.
So, let's start off. Fingers 1, first of all,
is gonna go in the middle, roughly, of the fret.
Okay? Maybe slightly toward the 2nd fret there,
but it's the 2nd fret, 3rd string.
So, 1, 2, 3rd string.
More or less the same place it was for our D chord,
but just back a little bit, half a centimeter or something like that.
2nd finger's then gonna reach over the top,
and is gonna go down right next to the fret on the 4th string.
And 3rd finger is going to reach underneath,
still in the same fret on the 2nd string.
It will feel a little cramped the first few times you do it.
It feels a lot better after a week's practice, I can assure you.
Let's take it off and do that one more time.
So, first finger in the 2nd fret of the 3rd string.
1, 2 on 1, 2, 3. Okay?
And then slightly...not right up at the fret, so pull it back a little bit.
Then 2nd finger will reach over, right up next to the fret,
2nd fret, 4th string. 3rd finger, 2nd fret, 2nd string.
Now, we're not playing the thickest string for the A chord,
so we start by testing out the 5th string.
♪
If that's not ringing out correctly,
it's almost certain the 2nd finger being a little bit too high,
and muting it. So, make sure you're using the tip of the 2nd finger there,
and it's not sitting too high and muting the 5th string.
Now we go onto the 4th string,
♪
which is the note played here by the 2nd finger.
If that note's not ringing out clearly,
it's almost certain that you're not pressing hard enough.
Because the position reaching over the 1st finger there,
it has to be right up next to the fret.
♪
You might find if you've gone too far,
it starts to sound a little dead. Not buzzy, but just dead.
So, here's the good note...
♪
Here's a...if you crossover too far, it goes a bit dead.
So, just behind is what you want that one to be.
♪
The note here on the 3rd string,
♪
if you're not getting that one,
it's probably just not pressing hard enough with the 1st finger.
So, try and really sneak the 1st finger up there,
in between the other two fingers,
but without pushing the other two fingers past the fret.
♪
Okay? It might sound like this...
that's not pressing hard enough.
Still a bit rattly, a little bit harder, there we go.
And we got the good note.
3rd finger should be right up next to the fret, anyway.
Because of the position of the fingers,
most people will find that that note's probably one
that's not gonna need too much attention.
Should be okay.
Although the hardest one, is to follow, which is the thinner string.
Now, the 3rd finger...all of the fingers are cramped up,
especially if you've got big hands.
It will take a bit of fiddling around with the hand position,
to get this one ringing out nice and true.
The most common problem by far with the A chord,
is the 3rd finger just laying slightly over too far,
and muting the thinner string.
When you're practicing your A chord,
of course, you go through that same Chord Perfect program.
So, you've placed the fingers first, 1st finger...2nd finger...3rd finger.
You're not pressing too hard, first of all.
Remember, just getting them in the right place.
Then we do a strum...
and we try and figure out what went wrong, and reposition things.
So, that one. Tip of the 2nd finger come down a bit there.
That one's okay.
That's not ringing out at all.
So, 1st finger, just getting that snuck up.
3rd finger's okay.
Up on the tip more.
Then we've got that...
Once we've tested all the notes, we do that final strum,
♪
and we're gonna tell ourselves,
"That's how I want you to go, when I'm playing the A chord".
The best way of practicing this chord and every chord you learn in the future,
is a little bit often.
Try and avoid the temptation spending ages on the one chord,
pressing down real hard all the time, giving yourself finger pain,
not doing any of the other fun stuff that you could be practicing.
Much better off sticking to a proper routine,
where you time yourself and you do 2, 3, 5 minutes, whatever.
Little bursts of practice where you can
play it, take it off, put it down, on and off,
getting used to what the chord feels like,
practicing getting it right, then stop and move onto another thing.
Okay? Or have a little break, give your fingers a bit of a rest.
Don't feel that pressure of like,
really going hard on learning a particular chord.
Actually the benefits are a lot less,
than the benefit that you'll get from small amounts of regular practice.