Bar Chords
Source: Kids Guitar Chords
What is a Bar Chord?
To explain this , first take a look at your guitar. Do you remember what the nut of the guitar is? If not look at the Guitar Parts article. The nut spans the entire width of the fretboard right? The strings rest on the nut and we call all of these 6 strinsg open when we do not place a finger on any of the frets.
A bar chord uses your first finger of the left and you span over the entire width of the fingerboard, just like the nut does. The difference is that your finger is movable or free to move up and down the fretboard and your guitar nut does not move. So let’s just consider your index or barred finger a movable nut.
How Do You Play a Bar Chord?
The trick of playing a bar chord is strengthening your index finger to press down on all of those strings. This is probably one of the harder things for a beginner guitar student to master – or get any sound at all for that matter. It takes pure practice and strength training. You must not get discouraged with the difficulty – in time it will come to you. This is the way a bar chord works with just about everyone.
How Can We Make it Easier?
Here are a few tricks you can try to make playing the bar a bit easier.
Keep your index finger of your right hand straight.
Keep your index finger directly behind the fret, just like your single finger notes are played.
Drop the palm of your right hand away from the neck of the guitar.
Place your right hand thumb in the center of the neck so you can pinch against the barred finger.
Make sure you have the action on your guitar as low as it can go. Check out the following articles:
Guitar Nut
Guitar Saddle
Guitar Action
Even though these articles are quite well documented, this may be a bit more than you are willing or able to bite off. Perhaps you have a good woodworking friend or relative who could do this for you. If not, you may need to venture down to a guitar repair-shop to have this done.
Note: Not every single guitar required the strings to be lowered, but many do. These articles will also arm you with knowledge as to what to look for , see if it is required and what a possible remedy would be.
Our First Bar Chord:
The first bar chord we get to start things off, is the F chord. It is the second chord in C Major chord family. You bar your finger entirely across the first fret. Once you have the bar in place you place the other 3 finger of the left hand in their correct locations. By having 3 other fingers placed on the fretboard, it makes playing the bar somewhat easier. You get better leverage with more fingers and more strength. Look at the picture at the top of this article. This shows a barred F Major chord in perfect form.
Also the other 3 fingers take some of the barring duties away from the first finger. Now you really only have 3 strings to bar and those would be the 1st, 2nd and 6th strings. So you can distribute you index finger pressure to play these 3 strings by re-positioning your index finger a bit until you get it just right.
Tags: bar chords, free guitar chords, free guitar lessons, how to play guitar chord, kids guitar chords
