Guitar Chord Change Mastery - How To Play Complete Songs

Are you able to easily and quickly learn how to play complete songs from beginning to end? I am talking about complete songs—not just the beginning or a cool part from a chorus. Do you have a hard time memorizing all the chord fingerings and playing certain chord changes? Do you sometimes feel like giving up part way through a song because it seems to overwhelming to continue to try to finish it?

I've been a guitar teacher for many years, and I've noticed that not learning complete songs affects intermediate and advanced guitar players nearly as much as beginners. There are many good guitar players that do not know many songs all the way through. They can play some parts (usually the main, beginning part to the song) but not much more than that. What these players are missing is a simple, orderly way to analyze songs and reduce them into small, easily-practiced parts that can be mastered individually and then assembled into the complete song.

Beginning guitar players are often overwhelmed when trying to learn new songs. Memorizing all of the chord fingerings and learning to play all of the chord changes smoothly can feel like a major task. Most of my students have felt this way - it is very common. I have found that the best way to learn all the chords in a song and master the different parts and chord changes is to use a simple, systematic approach to analyzing and memorizing all of the pieces of the song. Using this approach will allow you to learn songs quickly and with much less hassle and aggravation and results in you learning the song all the way through from beginning to end.

Watch the guitar song and chord video lesson now and learn the best way to play finish and complete songs.

These are the main reasons why most guitar players have trouble playing complete songs:

1. They just play easy parts (for them) of the song and skip the parts that or are hard.

2. If they do try to play the hard parts, they make mistakes on them each time they play them—this is majorly frustrating as a guitar player.

3. Most beginning guitar players don't know how to identify and practice the most difficult parts of the song.

4. They always start playing at the beginning of the song every time they practice it.

5. All of these things cause them to get stuck in a loop of not finishing songs. These guitar players simply give up on the song because they get frustrated and pick something different to try to learn and continue the whole process of not learning complete songs.

Let's look at the solution. There is a better way - and it's easy to understand and implement.

Learning How To Finish Songs

Playing complete songs does not need to be an overwhelming task. There are many songs that have lots of repetition of the chords and chord progressions in them—and most songs only have a few parts (verse, chorus, bridge etc.) Because there is so much repetition in most songs, there are really not that many different chords in them. Listen to some of your favorite songs with a critical ear and notice that you will hear a lot of repetition of songs parts, chords and melodies in them.

If we think about the song in this way, the thought of learning entire songs becomes much less overwhelming. Remember that there are usually not all that many chords in most songs and that you will only have to practice some of the song parts more than others.

Most of the chord changes in songs will be fairly easy for you to learn and play. You will still have to practice them, of course, but usually there are only a couple chord changes or parts in most songs that will give you the greatest amount of difficulty and trouble.

So, along with noting the large amount of repetition in most songs, know that all parts of the song will not be equally difficult to master. The answer to playing and mastering entire songs is based on using a really simple practice method so that you will be able to:

A. Figure out which chords you will need to memorize and work on the most in order to master the fingerings.

B. Easily notate all of the chords you will need to know to play any song.

C. Put together a targeted practice plan for the chord changes in the song so that you can conquer all of them in the shortest amount of time.

D. Get all of these pieces in place and play the complete song with the less practice time.

Download the chord and song lesson worksheet and watch the free song lesson video to get the exact system you need to play and finish songs.

Here are the steps to learning and mastering chords, chord changes and playing complete songs:

* Write the names of all the chords in the song on a piece of paper. Use the sheet music to go through the entire song and list each chord once.

* Make diagrams of all those chords in the song that you just listed. Diagram each chord one time.

* Review the fingerings of all of the chords in your list. Note which ones you are already can play and the ones that need to be learned.

* Go through all the chord changes in the song and write them out in pairs. List each chord change once.

* Play through each chord change listed and figure out which ones are the hardest for you to play. This step is the most crucial part of this practice plan. Most of your practice time will need to be spent practicing the chord changes that are hard for you. This is the key to this lesson and to learning complete songs: Work the chord changes that are difficult for you to play and practicing them until they are easy for you.

Study and use the song and guitar chord worksheet to learn how to break down any song you want to play. The free video will show you these simple steps in detail and the worksheet will provide you with the exact blueprint you need to analyze and play any song. You'll no longer be stuck playing unfinished parts of songs.

With over 20 years as a musician, instructor, composer and performer, Paul Kleff is a rock/metal guitarist based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.

Paul's current CD release, titled "Machined", is a four-song EP with two instrumental songs and two songs featuring guest vocalist Jerry Keyzer. Compositionally, the songs cover a wide palette of rock, metal and shred guitar styles.

Paul Kleff