Lesson 6

Lesson 6: Chord Practice with F and C7

In the last lesson you learned how to read a chord chart. Today we will put into practice learning 2 chords. The trick with playing any chorded stringed instrument is learning to move your fingers in a graceful musical way. The best way to do this is to practice going from chord to chord.

When you put multiple chords in a special order that is called a CHORD PROGRESSION.

In lesson 6 we are going to start with the F chord and C7 chord. Remeber last lesson that C7 is a special name for a chord. It's different than a regular C chord. It has a different color and makes things a little more interesting by adding the 7th note from the base. See if you can tell the difference between the two. Play each of these chords to see what you think.

After tuning your instrument, take some time to practice along with this video. It will go through a chord progression with F and C7 three different times. The first time through you will just strum the chord one time on the first beat and then you have 3 whole beats to get your left fingers in position for the next chord. Use this time for your brain to tell your fingers how to move. The second listen will be a shorter time to change chords. The tempo is the same but you will strum twice before changing chords. The third time through you will down strum every beat and have very little time inbetween changing chords. You can use youtube settings to adjust the speed as you need. Practice with this video daily. In the next section I will provide a variety of simple songs for you to play along with and then your next belt test will be to play one of those songs. Good luck!