I have a question about playing barre chords. I can play them cleanly as one offs and do pretty good doing 60 second chord changes between open chords and barre chords. Where I struggle is doing chord progressions and using barre chords in songs playing rhythm. Then I tend to get a little sloppy. The question is I know that repetition is my friend but, does anyone have other suggestions to try to better nail barre chords playing rhythm in songs?
Thanks!
Snojones is exactly right in mentioning muscle memory & getting the complete motion of each chord change at once. So keep drilling them!
Here are a few other tips that can help.
Use less pressure. You only need a certain amount of pressure or tension to fret notes. Any more is wasted effort and hinders your ability to get from one postion or chord shape to the next efficiently. But beginners tend to squeeze too tightly. Especially on something as initially difficult as barre chords. So experiment until you find the minimum amount of pressure required for your fingers to sound each chord. This will help your fingers get more nimble & have more endurance.
Practice drilling each change separately from playing through a progression. Just play each chord once, focusing on getting it exactly right with minimal tension. Then switch to the next chord, playing it once.
The point here is to focus on the motion required for the chord change. Don't waste time & effort strumming or playing through a whole progression. Just focus on one chord, strum, next chord, strum, repeat. This is the kind of repetitious practice that really helps focus on getting certain specific motions into your muscle memory. Then you can count on your hands to do the change while you start to add in the other elements: strumming, playing the progression, staying in time.
Isolating difficult tasks can be an important step for some learners.
Hope that helps!
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