Bar Chords

i can play a few! i think they're cool

time, practice and more practice definately helps. also dont push it let it come naturally over time. Your hands are the most important weapon in your musical arsenal dont let them get damaged by excessive frustation.

you can angle your fretting fingers which will help. try strumming gently and evenly. for me the strumming and pressure with my fret hand go well, 'hand in hand'. you don't have to squeeze the shit out of the neck. maybe the action on your guitar is too high for you. when i first started my thumb would hurt, obviously i was pressing too hard.so for me, equal pressure was key.

enharmonic wrote:

I hate bar chords too. If you mess up, people throw bottles at you and shit. That is not what I would call positive reinforcement.

barre chords...well...they're quite another matter all together

Haha,,, you took my joke!

Bar chords to me are: G, C, D, take swig of beer, on to the next verse!



For barre chords, you need to strengthen your fingers, but you also need to concentrate on your wrist position.
Keep your guitar positioned so that your wrist is as parallel to your forearm as you can get.
Keep your thumb on the back of the neck, and parallel to the neck. It doesn't seem like that would work, but that's your most ergonmic position.

Also, don't clamp down so hard on the neck! Keep lightening up your touch on the frets until you put the minimum amount of finger pressure on the fretboard and still make the note ring. You'll be surprised how little pressure you need. Concentrate on each finger and how hard you're pressing that string, and soon it'll become second nature.

Another tip: If you're playing an E position barre, for instance, arch your index finger to hit the two high strings and low E. That way you aren't concentrating so much muscle on the frets that are already fretted with your other fingers.

If you learn your triads and different fingering positions, too, you may find that you get away from so many barre chords. You don't always need 6 notes in every chord. Try playing 3 or four note chords with your index finger on the low E or A string as the bass note.

moster78 wrote:

I find the triad method as a pretty way to avoid barre chords, but I'm still working on forming them quicker and cleaner, just so I don't skimp out on them. But basically Bob's right, the three notes in the triad are all that really make the chord major or minor or whatever, everything else is kind of just filler, like the same note just an octave higher. Also, I just go with the triads when doing chord inversions.

That becomes especially true when you play in a band. If the bass player already is playing the root, then you don't need to play it either.
Too many notes muddies things up sometimes.

You know who are masters of that, like the Stones or not, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards interweave their notes into chords all the time. If you actually analyze the way they do it, it's amazing and it contributes to that sound. Onstage it's really hard to tell who's starting and finishing the same progression sometimes when they get going.
Same with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir and Phil Lesh. Those guys were masters of playing one chord amongst three people and doing chord changes on the fly by changing a note here and a note there. Phil's bass lines are amazing because he isn't just playing the root, he could be playing the third or 5th or whatever, and a couple of notes from Garcia and Weir make up the rest in an unusual inversion.

just play 'Lukin' for 10 minutes a day.:)

for B's and and barre chord like that i barre my first and third (ring) fingers. no need to use 4 fingers when you can use 2.

ledvedderman wrote:

For bar chords based on the a string, I use my first finger and pinky. I find it way to difficult to use my 1 finger for the bar and then the three other fingers on the same fret...

I just read that and it seems to make no sense, do you get what I mean though

i think, so your pinky barres the bottom four strings? (4th fret on a B chord)?

i use my ring (3rd) finger opposed to three fingers on the same fret.

elstongunn wrote:

i think, so your pinky barres the bottom four strings? (4th fret on a B chord)?

i use my ring (3rd) finger opposed to three fingers on the same fret.

That's it, I sometimes use my ring finger too, whichever one I can get to quicker

Thumb on the back of teh neck like the man said, focus on teh E form ones first cos they are easier, practice around teh fifth fret, not near teh nut, much less tension required. Practise in short bursts so you don't exhaust your strength, and be patient.
You can't cram musical technique, it takes time !!