Guitar Tricks Online Guitar Lessons

Spicing Up Basic Chords

 
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In this tutorial we'll look at some super cool and useful embellishments that you can add to your basic open chords. Think of the open chords as the cake and the embellishments as adding icing or decoration. We'll go through some of the most common examples of open chord embellishments and practice them one-at-a-time and then as always, by the end of this tutorial we'll use it all within the context of a song.

Instructor Anders Mouridsen
Tutorial:
Chord Embellishments
Styles:
Any Style
Difficulty:
download lesson open guitar tuner

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Questions & Answers

11 months ago
Whenever we go from "learn song" to "play song", I am having great difficulty switching between chords accurately and fast enough to keep up. An AI query says that there are "pivot," "freeze," and "blast" methods that can help one with this problem. I searched "pivot" at Guitar Tricks (GT) and don't see lessons on it. Does GT have and lessons on this stuff? Can you recommend any other exercises for me? Thanks in advance!
Mike Olekshy 10 months ago

Hello - thanks so much for your question! Don't worry so much about these terms - they are not formal methods you need to follow. Somebody just made up these terms. I recommend these 2 tutorials (which cover the same thing without giving them fancy names) for working on your chord changes: https://www.guitartricks.com/lesson/11435 https://www.guitartricks.com/lesson/23483 The basic idea is to go slow with your chord changes at first, and practice switching them with lots of repetition. Find ways to minimize the movement of your fingers between the chords. When practicing songs - be sure to use the speed buttons located on the left side of the video frame, and slow down the song to 75% or 90% to keep working on your chord changes. Hope this helps! Keep at it - you'll get it!