This exercise is from the Core Skills Strumming section.

Now you can vary a chord and maintain a regular rhythm, let's look at a VERY common chord variation. There are many songs which use this.

Again the purpose here is to help you co-ordinate both hands, which is always hard for beginners because your hands are doing two very different things. It can be a bit like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. However, with practice your hands will become more able to do their jobs properly.

Last time we had a very stable rhythm to maintain with our strumming hand. This time the strumming will be a bit more fun. We are playing using downstrokes and upstrokes. Pay attention to the strumming dots in the ActionTab and listen to the music until you know the tune in your head before practicing. Use the "Light Strings" option from the Settings menu to help you see which strings are being played.

The chords we are switching between here are D major and D sus 4. Don't worry about the names or the theory for now. Our focus here is technique.

This time we add a note with the little finger (yellow dot) on the 3rd fret. This changes the D chord into a D sus 4 chord. When the yellow dot disappears, this means remove your little finger. This returns you to the D major chord again.

Note that we keep the 2nd finger (blue dot) ON the string even when the little finger is playing the fret in front of it. There are 2 reasons for this:

1. It supports the little finger playing the note in front of it. It takes a while before your little finger gets the strength and dexterity required to play notes comfortably by itself. This way your stronger 2nd finger is already doing half the work of holding the string down for you.

2. When you remove your little finger, the right note for the standard D chord is nicely waiting to be played straightaway because your 2nd finger is already in place!

Note that for the D chord you only play the top 4 strings - practice your strumming to make sure you do not include the Low E and A strings in your strums! Mute these strings with your thumb if that suits you. This will be easier for some people.

The D major chord is often tricky for people at first. Keep practicing!!! It's the only way to improve. If you have difficulty, try moving your fretboard fingers along with the ActionTab without any strumming. This will train your fretboard fingers to find each chord without the complication of the strumming hand. Then add in the strumming when you feel your fingers know which frets to move to.

Also, make sure you hold those notes down hard enough and that you aren't accidentally muffling adjacent strings. Aim to get good clean notes from each strum that you play. This can be particularly tricky at first if you choose to use thumb muting. Practice is the key!