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Comment by eatonphil | Hacker News Reader

I started playing guitar in middle school and I hated learning complex chords so I'd do what this video suggested and just play the stripped down/simplified version of the chord.

But it's not just about open chords. If you strip down a Bm7b5 to a Bm and play the Bm on the second fret it still has half of the character of the Bm7b5 chord.

Only recently did I start gaining the patience to learn every suggested chord and it makes a tremendous difference.

That said, I prefer piano for accompanying because the piano's tone is somehow more forgiving with basic chords than guitar is.

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Yeah, for instance, it's much easier to melodically space out or articulate the notes in a chord on a piano so they don't clunk all together like the strum of a guitar without ever crossing into arpeggio. That can make for beautiful open melodic chord playing when you're jamming out or noodling around without ever breaking the rhythm.

IMO: It's much better to understand how to construct chords and then play music and memorize them by trying to play both the melody and some kind of accompaniment. You end up getting stuck in situations where you need to rearrange the chord or learn a new one and you can build them up that way without drilling.

I do know the basics of chord construction but it's still way easier to think through it on a piano because keys are all linear whereas with guitar strings you have to translate across strings with varying relationships. Not saying it's impossible it just takes more work to internalize that on guitar than piano. And I'm not there on guitar.

I'm right there with you - I have lots of experience playing songs on piano with just lyrics + chords, and I use all kinds of inverted chords without even thinking about it. "Reading" the keyboard is much easier than reading the fretboard.

One other thing that makes it harder on guitar is that the chords that are easy to play are often various inversions, so your "A" chord might actually be a first or second inversion. I'm still just learning movable shapes on the guitar, and getting the fingerings right is tricky as things grow and shrink moving up and down the fretboard, something that also isn't a problem with keyboards.

Check out the chord Melody guitar course at improviseforreal.com It Will make these relations very clear and help your playing a lot. Source: happy customer myself

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