Changing chords in songs

Going from Am to F you lift nothing: the middle finger stays on the G string and one more finger joins it.

Change early, change light

Most beginners can hold each chord long before they can change between them in time. The trick is to plan the change. Look for anchor fingers, fingers that stay in place from one shape to the next. Am to F keeps the middle finger on the 2nd fret of the G string and just adds the index finger. C to Am needs only one finger to move, from the A string to the G string. G to C is the hardest of the four because three fingers leave and a different one lands, so practise it alone. Move all the changing fingers together as one shape, not one at a time.

Timing matters more than perfection. When a chord change is coming, let go of the old chord on the last up strum of the bar, the "&" of 4, so the new shape is ready for beat 1. That last strum may sound a little open or messy, and that is fine: listeners hear the downbeat much more than the final "&". Practise each pair of chords on its own, four strums each, then two, then one, at a tempo where you never stop. A steady slow strum with clean changes sounds far better than a fast one with pauses.

Three public domain songs

Twinkle, the 18th-century French tune, uses three chords in C: C, F and G. Its first line goes C C | F C | F C | G C, two chords per bar, and the middle line alternates C F C G. Row, Row, Row Your Boat, in 6/8, stays on C until "life is but a", which goes to G7, and returns to C on "dream". Ode to Joy, Beethoven’s 1824 theme, alternates C and G: C for bar 1, G for bar 2, C for bar 3 and G for bar 4, ending on C at the end of the next phrase. These songs are short, everyone knows them and they are free to play anywhere.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat needs a different strum because it is in 6/8. Try a down stroke on each of the two dotted-quarter beats and a light up stroke on the third eighth of each beat: "D - U D - U". The only change comes near the end, and it is a good one to drill: from C (0003) to G7 (0212) the ring finger leaves the A string and three fingers land on the C, E and A strings, then they all lift for the open C shape again. A useful routine is the one-minute change: set a timer, switch between two chords on every beat for one minute and count how many clean changes you made. Repeat a few days later and compare the numbers.