The farther from the fret you get, the more difficult it will be to fret cleanly and keep the strings depressed. When barring across the strings, you’ll want to make sure you’re pressing close to the fret. It also provides the hand with proper leverage to press evenly across the strings in order to cleanly fret all strings. This allows your fingers enough room to clear the strings properly so there isn’t any inadvertent muting occurring on the lower three strings. However, when playing barre chords, the thumb should be located on the back of the neck, middle to upper center. It’s comfortable and we can finger the notes cleanly in this position. When playing open chords, we often wrap our thumbs over the top of the neck. However, there are some things you can do to make the process of playing them a little easier. In the beginning, barre chords are tough to play. It’s important you know the notes on the guitar fretboard! In other words, the G major barre chord with the root on the 3rd fret of the 6th string can be moved up two frets to form an A major barre chord and so on. All of these barre chord shapes are movable up and down the fretboard. Each diagram contains the chord intervals as well as the recommended fingering for each chord shape. With the root note on the 6th string, we get the barre chord shapes below. The most commonly used barre chords are those with the bass root note on string 5 and string 6. While there are many types of barre chords, in this lesson we’re going to focus on the essential barre chords you’ll see most often: major, minor and 7th chords. There are some tips later in the lesson to help you get started on the right foot. But, like most things with guitar, as you practice it’ll get better over time, so you just need to be a little patient with the process and stick with it. They also can be very fatiguing when held for long periods of time or used frequently in chord progressions. They require a good bit of hand strength to hold the strings down and play cleanly. If you’re familiar with a capo, essentially your index fingers acts as a capo fretting multiple strings.įor beginners, barre chords can be rather unpleasant to play, particularly the dreaded F barre chord. What are barre chords?īarre chords are chords where you’re using the index finger (sometimes other fingers as well) to “barre” across multiple strings on the fretboard. In this lesson, we’re going to dive into the essential barre chord shapes, some variations for those chords, and tips on playing them that can help lessen the pain and frustration of the learning process. That said, they can be a bit of a pain to get down as they require a good bit of hand strength and dexterity to play well. Essential Barre Chords Every Guitar Player Should Knowīarre chords are an important part of a guitar player’s repertoire and really expand your ability to navigate the fretboard beyond open chord playing.

F bar chord on guitar