I came from piano and harmonica. I can't switch chords well either unless I'm improvising. Basically any set of guitar tabs on the internet may as well be unplayable for me.

I'm not pitch perfect either, but most people seem to think I am. I mean.. Honestly. I'm in a weird place with theory. I can tell you why a song sounds cool, and if I sat down and really, really tried I could probably tell you the key it's in. Time signature? lol probably not. Depends on the drumming.

What I did on guitar is learn the basic chord shapes and then decide "fuck this" and started playing single notes. It gives you a sound like Roy Buchanan or Jesse Ed when you aren't doing the fancy shit.

If you learn the scales a triad is just the Root, major 3rd, and perfect 5th. Toss in the 7th, and if you really wanna impress people play the 2nd or 4th an octave up. Get used to it and play quickly enough and most people won't really notice the difference in a meaningful way. You can even pull off a lot more in standard than you could otherwise, because you aren't trying to mimick the artist entirely.

and despite how I started this comment I've played Iris in Standard (it's not in Standard lmao) and Black Sabbath shit ON ACOUSTIC in standard. Black Sabbath isn't standard either. People say it's gold.

Just be clever instead of trying to do what everyone else does.

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anonymous 5 minutes ago

Just to add to above (it's me again) the good jazz isn't just a weird collection of chords anyway. Some songs like "It Happens Everyday" have dyads, triads, single notes, and plenty of space. Learn something cool like "It Happens Everyday" and no one would say shit.

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anonymous 3 minutes ago