help!

You dont need to sell your soul try counting along when you strum each down strum is a beat like 1 2 3 4 see if that helps

Hi Nedaph and welcome to Chordie,

I think there are two possibilities here:

One: Consciously or subconsciouly, you are still having to think of of your chord shapes when you change and the mental effort put into your left hand creates hesitation in your right.

Two: You are trying to change chords as you see them in the music, when if fact you have to start changing before, so that your fingers land on the right strings where the chords are shown in the music.

I am afraid that in either case the only answer is practice but rest assured that it will come in time and at six months of playing you can not expect to be playing perfectly. Playing your songs much slower might help and then gradually increase the tempo.

Keep at it, it will be worth it in the end.

Roger

Hi Nedaph,

I had a similair problem when I started playing there was a distinct pause in strumming when I was changing chords. I found the easiest way around it was to not play a song but play around with a standard strumming patter DUDUDU and change to chords that I knew well A E G, as I was not needing to think about the chords that I was changing to, my strumming hand didn't pause in anyway. Sounded like crap at times, but I just looked at it as finger exercises.

Give it a try, it becomes easier when your less focused on trying to get a particular song down.

Kirria

My thoughts would be that you are just trying too hard. Slow everything down during practice. Don't worry about the song, concentrate only on the chord changes and struming with everything being nice and slow. If you are trying to perfect this while listening to the song being played listen to the words of the song and associate the chord changes with certian word. Also, look at the song, how difficult are the chords for that song? There are thousands of 2 and 3 chord songs out there. Start out simple with an easy chord progression in G,C & D or A, D & E or D, G & A. These are all open chords that are easy. Just use a down / up / down / up / down / up / down / up strum while counting (down =1 and up = and) 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & (change chords here) and repeat. Make up your own pattern as you go and keep practicing. Any of the above patterns can be made into a 12 bar blues progression and thats something that everyone should know. Again, keep it all slow. Your speed will come.

Nela

A newbie player will break rhythm to check the placement of the fingers on the frets. Gotta maintain rhythm. If you miss a chord change, don't pause or complain, keep the rhythm going and be on time for the next change.
Play it slowly enough to get it smooth, then speed it up via many repetitions to tempo.