Hey! Rhythm strummers. You know this song I bet.

[Demonstration]

Wild thing, you now that song. Well, I can only show much of that song we’ve limited to 30 seconds in the free lessons. So I’m going to save a little for later but this is a typical of our whole class of songs. You have three chord that where there’s is a lot of chord changing going on. And a lot of people teach you these chords in a way that makes it hard to play. And I know a much easier way to do it so I’m going to give you a little lesson on that then we’ll come back and show that in wild thing.

Okay so a three quartered song in A. There’s a lot of them and lot of them with lots of chord changing or even once in other keys but you use this A, D, and E like—

[Demonstration]

You’ve got to change those chords pretty fast and a lot of books, maybe all the books show you this A chord. And it works but it's very hard to get to it from here. Everything has to move. All your fingers move to there and then all your fingers have to move to go to the D chord. If you play your A chord this way, this is my secret A chord, like this.

[Demonstration]

First of all, it's easier to fit your fingers on the strings because there’s more room when you’re doing every other string and then slipping in from behind with your first finger. Can you see what I’m doing? I’ve got my ring finger on the second string, 2nd fret. I’ve got my middle finger on the fourth string, 2nd fret, and that by itself would be an A7 chord. Then my first finger comes behind and holds down the third string on the 2nd fret.

Now the big advantage to why this work so well is if I want to change to a D chord, I’ll leave my first finger where it is and I only move the other fingers. And so my first finger gives me like a pivot point. It's a way to know where I am. And so I can switch back and forth really fast now because I’m still holding onto the neck the whole time. When we go to the E chord, the only time I have to move my first fingers is to slide it one fret back and then it's the pivot point for the E chord so that all those changes are really easy to make then. Now, try that A then when you go to the D chord, do not lift your first finger. Just move the other fingers and go back to the A chord. Again, don’t lift your first finger.

Now to go to the E chord, just slide your first finger back one fret and then place left for the fingers, then go back to the A, your first finger slides for, then back to E it slides back, slides forward. I think once you started doing this, you’ll never go back to the other way. I was trying just a little a while ago to just not use this, play only this A chord and I almost can’t do it because I just don’t want to do it the hard way. And so in a song like Wild Thing, you have to play those chords.

[Demonstration]
This allows my fingers to get there really fast and spend all the time making the notes.

[Demonstration]