Never stop your strumming hand

Here is what most beginners do: strum, strum, strum, stop, stare at left hand, fix chord, start again. Each of those stops tells the listener that you got lost. And they make you practise stopping.

This lesson has one rule. Your strumming hand never stops.

Try it

Strum straight down, once per click, on G. Keep that going, unless something actually hurts. Now change to D every four strums.

Your fretting hand will not be ready in time. That is fine. Let your strumming hand keep going and hit whatever is there: a half-formed chord, muted strings, or just the open strings.

It sounds wrong for a moment. But if you listen to it for a while, you will notice that it still sounds like music, because the beat never broke. People forgive a bad chord much more easily than they forgive a stop.

The open-string secret

Now do it on purpose. On the last strum before each change, take your fretting hand off early and let that strum hit open strings. Use that beat to get your hand moving to the next chord.

Plenty of working guitarists do this. That one free beat gives your hand time to move.

Play G to D this way for three minutes. Do not stop for anything. Once that feels even a little bit natural, you are ready for a real song.