I agree with all the suggestion above, particularly letting your strumming hand ditate the speed and letting you fretting hand catch up. Indeed the suggestion about playing open string strums while you are changing can often enhance the sound, causing a dissonent sound, which before you brain can get to really dislike it, is resolved to a nice clean chord. I do this often in my playing by choice.
One aspect of fast chord changing is to be able to place all your fingers on the frets at the same time. After awhile this becomes easy, but at the beginning I certainly used to place my fingers down one at a time.
One tip I've seen to speed this up was from a Bob Brozman DVD. You form the chord and then start to lift your fingers from the fret board slightly and then place them back down, (like damping the chord) holding the chord shape. You then proceed to lift your fingers more each time until you are lifting them way up from the fretboard and then putting them back down on to board, all at the same time.
Repeat ad nausium, or at least until your wife and family throw you out of the house!! By then you should be able to play a nice fast ditty about being a lonesome hobo.
I'm sure you have heard and experienced this before, but the things which are frustrating us, in trying to achieve in our playing, become second nature some months down the road and we wonder why they ever caused us so much trouble in the first place. This, of course, if we practice practice practice!!
regards
Finbarr
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