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Neil Young-inspired Quick Chord Transition Exercise (G-A-Bm-E)

Lesson #415 • Feb 10, 2022

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Follow along with the print-friendly PDF!

It includes all of my notes for this lesson, allowing you to follow along at your own pace. You're free to download, print, and share the PDF across your devices.

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Editor’s notes

Hey there, friends! As I work on a lesson for Harvest by Neil Young, I wanted to put together this exercise which drills into the quick chord transition from G to A to B-minor to E. Back when I first learned Harvest, playing this transition smoothly was always a real challenge for me. As such, I wanted to make this lesson diving head first into the 4-chord sequence and give you a handful of tips I wish I had when I started out. Make no doubt, mastering this (or any) tricky chord transition will require practice – but there’s assuredly some room for being “smart” with how your’e approaching it. With that said, here’s some tips to hopefully make things easier for you.

  • 0:00 Preview & Lesson Overview
  • 1:50 Full Playthrough
  • 3:38 Simplifying the Chord Shapes
  • 5:09 Bass Notes that Buy You Time
  • 8:27 Starting Chord Transitions Early
  • 10:11 Final Tips & Advice

I don’t have a song lesson for Harvest by Neil Young just yet (it’s in progress), but here’s how it sounds when Neil plays it. My exercise in this lesson is inspired by his strumming in this song:

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