The concept is simple, just time yourself for one minute and see how many changes you can do! This works better than any other method I have ever heard of, it's really quite astounding how well this trick works. I started teaching it as a game for kids, but have since applied it to anyone learning guitar and is one of the key lessons in my whole beginners course, so check it out closely and use it often and it will really help you on your way!

Video Lesson

1 Minute Changes

Once you know how to play your chords the big challenge is to get your changes clear and fast to make sure that you can change fast enough to play a song without stopping between chords. You should be able to do this well before you start trying to use your strumming patterns, or your songs will always sound disjointed and kinda silly!

The big trick is to really focus on a particular chord change for one minute, use either a stop watch or a countdown timer. I use the countdown timer on my iPhone, but any one will do...

You will find this will make a HUGE difference if you stick to doing it every day, I see great results with this all the time with private students and I know you will see a fast improvement too :)

Use the practice schedule (we'll look at this more in BC-119) and write down how many times you make the change each session. You will find that being able to watch your progress will really help keep you motivated.

In Stage 1 we only have three chords so you will practice each pair of chords for one minute each.

Once you have done a bit of work on that we should have a bit of a look at the most basic rhythm so we can start strumming some tunes! So on we go to: BC-116 • 4:4 all down rhythm

HELP!!!!

If you need to ask a question about this lesson - there is a topic set up specifically to help you with this lesson. To help you find it easily you can click the following link and it will take you right the topic. You'll be able to see questions that other people had and ask your own questions! Hopefully one of the very helpful members of our community will be there to help you soon, I do go there and answer stuff too - but there are just too many questions for me to answer alone! So click this link to get help with this lesson!

Justinguitar Beginner's Products

I have four great beginners products that will help you make the most of this course. Most popular is The Justinguitar Beginners Songbook which contains 100 songs arranged by difficulty that perfectly match up with each level of the course. Many people told me they like books more than web pages so we've made The Justinguitar Beginners Course Book (comes with 2 x CD's too!) and many people found being online to watch the videos a pain so we offer The Justinguitar Beginners Course DVD which also means you can watch the vids in much better quality. Together they complete the whole online course and are perfect when there is no internet connection!! Also very popular is Practical Music Theory for those that like to know what they are doing and why!! It covers very basic theory in an easy to digest way and puts it onto the guitar! They are all available in Bundle Packs too where you can save a bunch of money!! Buying products and making donations help keep the site free and growing! :)