One of the most common problems I see with beginner to intermediate students is that they can't place all their fingers down at the same time when they play a chord. The C chord goes down one finger at a time, 1, 2, 3, and then they strum. So they struggle to get through their chords quickly, and they struggle to play along to songs.
Here are two very simple exercises to fix that. The key thing is you have to actually do them. You can't just learn them and expect your chords to get better.
The problem: building chords one finger at a time ▶ 0:49
It shows up in loads of chords. A C chord goes on first, second, third finger. With a G chord you might get one finger on the low strings and then the others on top, or the other way round. A lot of people play a D chord 1, 2, 3 instead of putting the whole shape down. And with barre chords it's very common to get the first finger on and then start placing the rest.
It's all too slow. Most people rely on anchoring one finger on the fretboard before the rest of the chord goes down, and that's the habit we're breaking.
Exercise one: reverse your finger order ▶ 1:12
Whatever order you naturally put your fingers down in for a chord, just reverse it.
About 90% of the people I see put a C chord down first, second, third finger, then strum. So we do the opposite: third, second, first. In other words, we're taking the slowest part of your hand and forcing it to go down first. That way you're training the weak part of the chord.
It works for other shapes too:
- Barre chords, like B minor. Most people put the first finger bar on, then the other fingers. Instead, get your second, third and fourth fingers on first, then just drop the bar on.
- G chord. If you like to put one finger on the low strings first and then the two on the higher strings, or the other way round, flip it.
A lot of guitarists lead with the first finger, so more often than not you'll end up leading with the third, or even the fourth. Those are the two weaker fingers of the fretting hand, which is exactly why they need the work.
Obviously, in an ideal world you'd put them all down together. But we're working towards that.
Why leading with the third finger helps ▶ 2:14
Here's something you'll notice with the C chord. If you lead with your first finger, you can happily hold that note on the B string while your other fingers are still quite far from where they need to be.
If you lead with the third finger on the A string, it pulls your hand in. Once it's there, the second and first fingers are already much closer to their notes, and they drop on quite naturally.
Same with the barre chord. Lead with those three fingers, and all your first finger has to do is plop down across the strings.
It's a simple mindset shift. You still have to practise it, but it should help you speed things up.
Exercise two: lift the shape and put it back down ▶ 3:05
The second one is simpler, but you might find it a bit harder. Take a D chord, or whichever chord you want to work on, and put it down comfortably. Don't worry about the order this time. If you need to go 1, 2, 3, that's fine.
Now we gradually take the chord further away from the strings and put every finger back down together:
- Press the chord down, take the pressure off, press down again. You might hardly see anything move, and that's fine.
- Lift the fingers a millimetre or two off the strings, keeping the shape, and push them all back down together.
- As that gets comfortable, lift a few more millimetres and come back down.
- Then start opening the hand up a little as you lift, and bring all the fingers back in together.
You might find that as soon as you let go of the strings, your fingers start to fall apart. That's exactly what you're training. Try your best to keep the shape together each time you lift.
The goal is to be able to open the hand right out, bring everything in and land the D chord with all the fingers closing in at the same time. If you can't place them together, you've moved too far away from the shape, so come back closer and build it up again.
Do it on several chords ▶ 4:48
Don't just do this on one chord. Doing it on one will help, but you're training the overall ability of your fretting hand, so work on at least three, four or five different chords. The chord finder is handy if you want some new shapes to try it with.
Go and try it
Pick three or four chords you use a lot. For each one, work out which finger you naturally put down first and practise leading with the opposite one. Then do a few minutes of lifting the shape off and putting it back down, a little further away each time. Once they're landing together, try the changes in a song or with the strumming patterns tool and see how much quicker they feel.
