an important exercise for beginners on guitar

Many beginners fall into the habit of always having to look at the fretboard when they are playing chords. This is understandable in the early stages as you are probably struggling to connect the right fingers to the exact strings and frets on the fretboard. It’s important to realize however that at some stage you must make a conscious effort to leave that crutch behind you

If you are always dependent on looking at your fretboard to play chords then you’ll develop a handicap which will affect your song playing.

Ideally what we want to achieve is being able to change to any chord without looking, that means that you should be able to play through songs without ever having to take your eyes of the actual song sheet.

By developing this you’ll be able to play chords and read lyrics without ever losing your place on the chord sheet. What you’ll probably find is that without this essential skill you’ll consistently lose your place and it’s going to make playing songs less fluid as you develop.

In a way it’s just like a professional typist, they do not have to look at their fingers while they type but rather can keep their eyes on the screen all the time. This greatly increases the speed at which one can type and the same is true for playing guitar.

To help develop this skill you can take some easy chord changes such as Em to G or C to F and cycle them around without looking. Then progress onto harder changes such as Em to C or G to D and so forth. You’ll find that in just a short while this ability ‘to play blind’ becomes easy and you’ll have made an important step forward in your guitar playing.

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