Transcript included below…

Recently, one of our kitchen drawers came off the rails. To be more specific, one of the rails fell down inside the cupboard, and was no longer supporting the drawer. It was fixable. But not the way it used to be fixed.

I had to get new versions of the mount drawer slides and sockets, because the original ones that came with our house weren’t made any longer. This meant doing some extra leg work to find them, but more importantly, taking new measurements to install them.

The original hardware was just not going to work anymore, so the drawer (and the cupboard where the drawer fit) had to be outfitted with a whole new setup.

But once the new hardware was properly installed, the drawer worked again, even better than it did before.

Think about your guitar journey for a moment, especially when it comes to learning a new way to do something. How do you respond when the process you’ve employed for so long no longer seems like the optimal way to get it done?

Do you get frustrated, overwhelmed, or annoyed? Or do you get excited about the possibility of something that could impact your playing for the better?

Exempli gratia – let’s say you play an open G Major chord and you want to transition to and from an open C Major chord. Simple enough? Perhaps.

But not so fast. Let’s make sure we’re specifically talking about the same thing. Please see the photos and diagrams I’m including.

We can start with an open G Major chord with our 3rd finger on the low G (string 6, fret 3) and move to a standard, pure C Major chord – and back – with tremendous ease.

We can also start with an open G Major chord with our 2nd finger on the low G, and move to what some call an open C2 chord, where we only need to move two of our fingers across the strings together.

This is all good.

But what if we want to move from one of these G chords to one of the other C chords? I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it done over and over and over. But consider how much extra effort has to be expended to make this transition.

There is literally nothing in common in terms of fingering between the G Major chord (that has the 2nd finger on the 6th string) and the pure C Major chord.

And there’s only one note in common between the G Major chord (that has the 3rd finger on the 6th string) and the C2 chord; it’s the high G on the 1st string, played by the 4th finger (incidentally, I haven’t seen this transition nearly as often.)Now remember, it’s ok to work hard. I certainly don’t want to be lazy about the process of developing our guitar chops. But I do see great merit in working smarter.

Perhaps you play these chords according to the green arrows on my diagram. But if you follow the red arrows as you play, maybe consider finding a new way. Try it my suggested way.

A word of warning, though – if you’ve been doing it the other way for decades, it could take several weeks – or longer – to reprogram your fingers.

But it’s good for us to try new fingerings like this, because this process does three things:

1) It expands our creative options

2) It allows for smoother articulations, leading to better musicianship, and

3) It keeps our minds young as we become more versatile

It may not be fun the whole time, but it will most certainly lead to…you guessed it…serious fun.

Today we talked about two different voicings for two common open Major chords, and more importantly, a more elegant way of moving between them.

But we also talked about the mindset necessary for opening ourselves up to new ways of doing things with the guitar.

Finding new approaches to our guitar playing and our musical knowledge will yield tremendous benefits for us as guitarists over the long game. And that is indeed a game worth playing.

If you want to discover some new ways of playing the guitar that just might be even more efficient and accessible than what you’re already doing, I invite you to head on over to our website at www.GuitarSuccess4U.com.

Who knows what kinds of game changers could be waiting for you inside the membership?

The Chord Kite Diagram, for one, is the next level of what I’ve been sharing with you today…and I’ve never seen it anywhere else.

Come to think of it, there are multiple tools and techniques I offer that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

I’ll leave it to you to see if GuitarSuccess4U might be a good fit.

Meanwhile, keep showing up, and I’ll see you next time!

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