improving your acoustic guitar chords

Have you been practicing guitar for a while now but feel like you’ve hit a wall and that your playing sounds bad? More often than not this is because you need to improve the quality of your acoustic guitar chords. Yes I know that you already know the shapes of your chords and can even change between them without too much trouble but just how much of your chord is really sounding pure and true? On closer inspection beginners often find that only a percentage of their guitar chords are actually sounding perfectly when they strum them. The shortest route to improving how you sound as a guitar player is to make sure the quality of each chord you play is secure and full sounding.

One of the ways in which Guitar in a Nutshell is able to teach beginners how to play guitar so successfully is by making complicated or difficult things on guitar easier. In the past you may have been frustrated by a particular guitar chord shape - something which you just couldn’t get a handle on no matter how much you practiced it. Unfortunately with guitar there are going to be things which take a lot of time to master and sometimes there’s just no telling how long it could take. The good news is that very often there are easier versions of these same troublesome chords which beginners can use in order to find an easier way around the problem and two common examples of this would be the common chords of F and B minor.

I have singled out these two chords in particular as they are not only a vital part of any guitar song-playing system but also because they are famous for being difficult for beginners to master. In fact, some guitar students avoid using them altogether but this severely limit’s the number of songs they are able to play.

The first important fact to note about F and B minor is that we have 3 possible shapes for each of them at beginners guitar level. I label the available shapes as easy, intermediate and full. Initially in Guitar in a Nutshell you are taught the easiest versions of these two acoustic guitar chords in order to allow you to progress uninterrupted into playing songs. While these easy versions will certainly do the trick of providing you with a legitimate F and B minor chord form they are not the best sounding of what’s available. To improve upon this in the Improvers Level of lessons we try to graduate up a notch and lift our F and B minor chord shapes to the middle level.

This is a great compromise as not only will you be rewarded with a fuller and stronger sounding version of those acoustic guitar chords but you can continue to use your easier versions in the meantime until you are technically able to make the changeover. I know it may be tempting to stick with the easier versions but try to be a little ambitious on guitar and believe in yourself - strive to be a guitar player with genuine quality and put in the extra bit of effort required. It’s really worth it.

Many chords for acoustic guitar can be extremely tough to do whether it be through having to stretch your fingers a lot or through or an awkward fingering, in most cases however I repeat that easier versions are available and it’s through providing a clever stepping-stone system that Guitar in a Nutshell is so powerful at teaching you to play guitar so quickly!

Nothing beats great acosutic guitar lessons to solve your playing problems.