One tip I give beginners is to also try and move your fingers as a unit not one by one.
+1 (at least!) on that. When I started playing guitar I was having problems with chords - a guy at my local music store told me "think of your hand as a rubber stamp, form the shape of the chord and then stamp it down on the fretboard. When you change chords, lift that stamp and then begin moving your fingers all together into the shape of the next chord before you stamp that one, and so on." That's probably the best musical advice I've ever gotten. Yes, it takes a little time to get it down, and you won't always do it religiously (there are some chord changes where your just moving a finger and that's all you'll do, for example). Still, by and large, I think it's the
only way to really get up to speed on chord changes.
The second bit of advice that I'd give is when you are first starting out, don't practice songs (not exclusively, at least). Spend at least a third of each practice session just practicing common chord
changes. The reason is, that's what you need to learn early on, how to get from a G to a C and a D, etc. So, spend a lot of time on stuff you need to learn early on, then the rest becomes easier later. Pick chords that go together in a key - G, C, D, Em and Am for the key of G; C, F, G, Dm and Am for the key of C; and F, Bb, C, Gm, Dm for F as examples. To put it another way, it doesn't do a lot of good to practice transitioning from a G to a B early on, for example, because you'll rarely encounter that change in a song.
And, as others have mentioned, above all, practice, practice, practice.
John
