Reduced chords make great beginning chords for guitarists. However there are some things I want to make you aware of so that you don’t fall into typical beginner traps when learning guitar that can easily be avoided and give you a much smoother and faster start.
1. Don’t just learn ONE thing: focusing on one Beginning Chord only
Give yourself variety but don’t over-do that either. There is a sweet spot. Work on learning 3 new things per week. You probably can accomplish that very easily with just a few minutes of practice every day. For example these reduced chords:
You can play the same chord in many different ways and you definitely should not play your chords in just one way, for example strumming it with downstrums, all the time.
2. Fingers out of sync
I tell you everything about the best way to play guitar chords here! Also here is a direct video demonstration for the first thing to learn on guitar.
In short: If you want to play chord changes fast, you must teach your fingers to sit down on the fretboard at the same time.
That is the general idea.
But more specifically you want to have every finger reach their destiny as fast and shortly as possible.
Usually by applying this principle, your fingers will end up moving synchronised by default because they simply don’t have any other choice.
So instead of seeing a chord change as “one finger movement” x 4, try to choreograph every chord change as one motion comprised of individual finger movements as one.
If you do this very slowly and consciously in the beginning you will have it much easier to automate this movement.
3. Expecting Too Much Too Soon
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I don’t want to discourage you with this. Rather the opposite.
Learning to play guitar, even beginning chords, takes its time.
So I recommend you don’t focus on creating great sounds in the first few weeks at all but rather put in the right kind and amount of reps.
This will help you establish and build up the habit of playing guitar regularly and frequently which is probably THE most deciding factor of how fast and how far you go with your guitar playing.
Most important: Celebrate all your little victories.
You could for example tell yourself: I will repeat this chord change slowly and cleanly 10 times now.
And once you have accomplished that, you could make a little celebrating ceremony like the “YES”-Fist.
Then continue to your next little goal.
That way you will build up great momentum and have great satisfaction from the simpler things on the guitar, so that you will enjoy the bigger things even more.
