Finally Landing Barre Chords
May 09, 2019
Took a minute!
Actually is a great feeling to become more fluid playing the guitar. Wrote a post recently about my first year of learning but felt the need to write about getting down barre chords as I have been struggling with them for quite some time! I have both an acoustic and an electric recently picking up a Les Paul Epiphone for about $100 at a local pawn shop here in Miami. I play both of them evenly but I really do love the Martin acoustic I have, that thing is just awesome to play and it takes more finger strength to get the chords down. So when I switch to the electric my playing is much better as i’m easily able to land chords and stretch my fingers to land difficult notes. I don’t like the electric all that much & I think when I can afford a better one i’ll sell the Epi for something that has more character. But on another note; i’m trying to improve my musical theory with the guitar and have picked up reading guitar tablature.
Tablature
Coming from the piano & learning from music teachers as a kid, I did initially learn how to read music but I stopped at a point. Now that I am learning guitar I want to get back into reading sheet music but guitar tablature makes for a really easy form of reading in which the notes are not based on pitches but by finger placement making it super easy to understand and play songs. Here is a one i’m sure all of you know by Bob Marley with the guitar tablature on the bottom half with the pitches at the top.
Redemption Song tablature
Placement of a capo on the 3rd fret and the botttom half of the portion that states TAB first block translates to --->
3rd finger low E
open A
2nd finger A
3rd finger low E
Simple enough to read but with more complex songs it just takes practice to read and play along at the correct pace of the specific song.
The ‘A’ chord shape
Barre Chords
Musical chords are a set of notes played together creating a harmonic set of pitches. Guitar chords are no different but coming from the piano it was initially very difficult for me to land them considering the finger placement on the guitar. Even basic shapes such as the A (shown to the right) were difficult for me to play but now I do not even have to think about going to that chord & usually play it with just my index finger now.
F barre
Barre chords are a type of chord that are played by having one or more fingers press down on multiple strings. The F chord shown to the left you would have your index finger pressing down on all of the strings on the first fret. To the beginner, these are initially really difficult to play. At least for me as i’m a novice guitar player I actually avoided playing them. With basic shape knowledge you can generally play a lot of songs but you are limiting yourself by avoiding them. I’ve noticed now that I have started to land them without too much ringing going on & being able to switch in a fast pace to other chords they are fun to play. I finally started landing these by painfully switching from D to F barre in a slow manner for about fifteen to twenty minutes a day until the ringing of the barre disappeared progressing on to other barre shapes down the fret board.
I’ll soon need to combine these with power chords which consist of a root note and a fifth on top of it. You can play these up and down the fret board with really nice sounds being produced. Power chords are played more often on electric guitars as you create distortion with an amplifier. I don’t have much practice playing them just yet but as my guitar skills get better i’ll take advantage of them.
Personal blog by Alex Virdee, 