This exercise is from the Core Skills section on Picking.

In this exercise we are concentrating on your ability to pick and smoothly move between chords without long, awkward gaps as your fingers find their way to the next chord. We are playing E major, C major and A major - chords you have already played by now.

These are very common chords. Once you can play at least 3 chords together you'll know enough already to play a lot of song parts. In the next ActionTab exercise we'll work more on reducing the gaps between chord changes even more.

Load up the ActionTab and play it. Notice that we only pick 4 notes from each chord, and that each is picked using downstrokes. Pay attention to see which strings are played and which are not. Use the 'Light Strings option' from the menu bar to help you. Also, use your ear to guide you when you start playing along. It is SO important to listen to what you are doing and compare it with the exercise audio, this will help you develop a musical ear.

Practice and practice hard until you can move between these chords and play along with the ActionTab. If co-ordinating your hands together is difficult, try only using your fretboard hand (with no picking) to move between the chords in time with the ActionTab. This will help your fingers find the notes on the fretboard easier, without worrying about your picking hand just yet. Once you can move your fingers to the right positions quickly just by themselves, start picking them with your other hand.

You may notice that we use different fingers to play the A major than in exercise 12. This is down to practicality. The first way we showed is the most common, but sometimes it makes sense to use different fingers - depending on the chord you have just switched from, or the next chord you need to switch to. Of course if you find the other way better, use it, there's no strict laws...do what works!