nicky flowers

unfortunately, this is just a Practise type problem

though, doing warmups before doing anything complex is probably a pretty good idea! make sure they move buttery smooth and are literally warm enough to move quickly before you start trying to play an actual song!

Keep practicing friend

I found the JustinGuitar free practice routines super helpful for doing just enough practice to build up callouses without a bunch of finger pain. Also has a good progression through chords and practice routines for swapping between chords too.

The beginning bit is definitely the hardest and it’s why so many people fall off it imo. Both things will improve in time; you’re starting at 0 for muscle memory on this stuff and a lot of open chords that you’re taught early on are kinda tough! There’s a reason everyone learns a couple nirvana songs that are just power chords so you can feel like you’re making some kinda progress lmao

Both of these problems do ease with time, but for practicing chord shapes you can try to change chords as slowly as possible in time with a metronome. Do it as slow as you need to such that you can can change chords in time. After the shapes and motion between them become embedded, raise the tempo a bit. If you’re screwing up a lot, lower it back a bit. It will take a little while, and you have to start over again as you learn new shapes, but if you keep at it you’ll get the hang of it.

Like a lot of practice routines this stuff can be really maddening and might be particularly so in the beginning, so also leave plenty of time to screw around.

getting started is the hardest, most time consuming part (as with all hobbies). just keep practicing semi-regularly and you'll get there. i've been playing guitar for years and i only just recently started improving my ability to make chord shapes. (i focused mostly on speed, arpeggios, and technique for my first years and didn't bother with chords until about a year or two ago.)

be willing to start as slow as possible and work your way there. play one chord, slowly change your position, play the next chord, repeat. as your muscle memory improves, your speed and accuracy will improve as well.

also, keep in mind that even seasoned guitar players can and will mess up in their playing. one of my favorite guitarists, Colin Marston, has said multiple times in interviews that he basically never trained one of his playing hands, and so his technique for playing is largely centered around working within his own deficiencies as a guitarist. and when you listen to his music or see his live performances, you can barely tell until he points it out (and even then, he does an excellent job of hiding it).

enjoy being bad at something as evidence that you are learning and progressing

what i did when i first started learning was pick a handful of chords, ideally ones that you can play one after the other to form a sort of song, in my case it was G Em C D, and then drill those for as long as i dared. usually between 10-20 per chord, i got tired quickly. and then i'll pull up someone else playing a chord progression and try to hit notes that "fit in" with that chord progression again for as long as i dare. and then do that 2-6 times a day, shouldn't take more than like 20 minutes per session but it's a thing.

on the final note before u switch chords u can strum an open chord which gives ur fingers enough time to prepare for the next chord. usually the note goes by quickly enough that the sound of the open chord isnt too noticable

as everyone else is pointing out, this is mostly a practice thing

but

pain when trying to press down the strings can be worsened if the action is too high, or your strings are particularly old or shitty - and a lot of entry level guitars, especially cheap acoustics, have high action and shitty strings

tip for finger hurt that helped me: when I wasn't practicing, I would sometimes put some pressure on the fingertips of my fretting hand with my thumb nail. not so hard or for so long that it hurts, just a bit from time to time. allegedly this helps the calluses develop faster but obviously I have nothing to compare to so idk. practicing sucks less once you've got em!

also beginnner level but - it's ok to keep your practice sessions short (30 mins or so) until your fingers toughen up, it takes a week or two

Seconding all the above comments! Some other things I can think of:

• If some fingers don't need to move between two chords, you can use them as anchors to help you place your other fingers faster. For instance, going from Am (EADGBe = x02210; I usually have my index finger on the B string, my middle finger on the D string, and my ring finger on the G string) to C (x32010), you can keep the fingers on the B and and D strings anchored and only move your pinky (and thumb).
  • Another good example is Wonderwall: the top 2 strings get anchored on the 3rd fret for pretty much the entire track.
  • (it took me ~8 years of guitaring before I heard about anchoring; thank you to Erica who is not on Cohost for describing it)
• TY-PESH mentioned above that the last strum on a chord can usually be an open or muted chord, or more generally just something that happens when you're moving from one chord to another (which gives you more time to move). You also don't need to have all your fingers placed on the first strum — usually, all you really need is the root (or the barre, if you're playing a barre chord), and then you can hammer-on the rest of the notes! In addition to giving you more time, this winds up also being more stylish and natural. It's a total win!
• Substituting open, seventh, power, and generally easier chords in place of harder chords usually works wonderfully (and sometimes even sounds fancier)! E.g. if Am (x02210) is too crammed, Am7 (x02010) requires fewer fingers.
• F, F#, A#, and B barre chords (major and minor) are infamously difficult for beginners. Especially on acoustic (where the string action is usually higher)! Don't worry about them not sounding perfect. Substituting them with a power chord is totally OK.
• If a specific chord shape hurts, try moving your thumb around! I sometimes see beginners have their thumbs too rooted on the guitar neck. It turns out I move my thumb around enough that the fact that it happens has become sort of subliminal for me!
• For major barre chords where the root is on the A string (e.g. C#, x46664), making the highest string ring out clearly is usually optional — it's an octave above the note played on the D string, so it doesn't add much harmonically. Ignoring it (e.g. x4666x) lets me fret the D, G, and B strings at the same time with my pinky, and then the top string winds up being either muted or ringing against the barre (depending on how precisely I place my pinky). That's easier for me to play and faster to set up than trying to fit one finger on each of the strings at the 6th fret here.