Playing guitar recently

[anttofm]

I've been playing guitar for a while, and I've only started with power chords back in March of this year. I've been loving playing along with songs that I like for the past 2 weeks (I've mostly focused on practicing certain techniques without playing, so I'm implementing more playing time now). I've been playing Dammit by blink-182 and I've slowed it down in my DAW to about 40BPM. For some reason, I choke when it comes to palm muting after the intro to the first verse, and I seem to have an issue where there's a noticeable gap in between shifting up from the C power chord to the G power chord, unlike the record. What can I do to make that shift sound more smooth? Should I slow the song down even more than that? What could I be doing better?

 

[Ed Seith]

Might depend on how you're playing the chords. Dammit features a C-G-A-F progression for the verses. If you play the C and G in the 3rd position, the A in the open position, and the F in the 1st position, they're very close together and you can move from one to the other with reasonable speed. If, however, you're trying to do it all on 6th-string power chords, then you're looking at 8th, 3rd, 5th, and 1st positions, which will go a LOT slower and not sound smooth at all.

So the question is, how are you playing it? Can you post a video? You can post unlisted to YouTube and then share here.

 

[anttofm]

I'd say I'm playing it the second way. I might be making it a bit more difficult on myself because I'm playing using a 7 string in Drop A (meaning that the top 6 strings are in standard), so I might have to work a bit harder to play the A power chord in open position... but I'll try that tomorrow and see if that makes it a bit easier to play. As for shifting from C to G, is there any way to make the gap in between less noticeable?

 

[William B.]

Had a friend Adam he showed me this song, you can play it in with the open strings I think.
I played it how the first way Ed said it but haven't in awhile
Maybe preparing a finger roll up or barring all and moving the other fingers up

 

[Brian G]

Might depend on how you're playing the chords. Dammit features a C-G-A-F progression for the verses. If you play the C and G in the 3rd position, the A in the open position, and the F in the 1st position, they're very close together and you can move from one to the other with reasonable speed. If, however, you're trying to do it all on 6th-string power chords, then you're looking at 8th, 3rd, 5th, and 1st positions, which will go a LOT slower and not sound smooth at all.

So the question is, how are you playing it? Can you post a video? You can post unlisted to YouTube and then share here.

I'll have to figure out the video thing. But I'm playing the 6th string power chord, in the key of A

 

[Ed Seith]

I'd say I'm playing it the second way. I might be making it a bit more difficult on myself because I'm playing using a 7 string in Drop A (meaning that the top 6 strings are in standard), so I might have to work a bit harder to play the A power chord in open position... but I'll try that tomorrow and see if that makes it a bit easier to play. As for shifting from C to G, is there any way to make the gap in between less noticeable?

The 7 won't matter. Here's the tab for the chords (leaving out the palm muted bits to keep it simple.

e ------------------------------------------------------- B ------------------------------------------------------- G --5-------2-------------------------------------------- D --5---5---2---3---------------------------------------- A --3---5---0---3---------------------------------------- E ------3-------1---------------------------------------- A ------------------------------------------------------- C G A F