Tag Archives for " bar chords "

7 Your First Bar Chord

This mini-course “Your First Bar Chord” will give you a brief introduction to the world of bar chords, and although it is quite short, by the time you have gone through it you should be playing your first bar chords.

Tip: I recommend printing off this mini course and keeping it with your guitar for handy reference.

Right click the link below and select Save Target As

Your First Bar Chord PDF Course

Note: You will need Adobe Reader to properly view this PDF file. You can download that for free here, if you don’t have it already.

When you’re ready to learn more bar chords, checkout the Bar Chords Made Simple course.

2 Root 6 Minor Chord: The Best Place To Start

The very first bar chord I teach people is always the Root 6 Minor chord pattern, because it is the easiest to get the hang of, and with it you can learn most of the basic principles of how bar chords work.

You’re probably familiar with the basic shape of this chord from the open E minor chord. The fingering for that chord is like this: 022000.

With a bar chord, all you’re doing is moving all those zeros to another place on the fretboard. To keep the pattern intact, you need to add to the 2’s the same number of frets you add to the 0’s. The new letter name for the chord is determined by the first note in that chord, from the 6th string. That’s why we call this a Root 6 chord; the root note is on the 6th string.

So, for example, if we move the open Em chord up to the fifth fret, we find an A there on the 5th fret of the 6th string. If you add five frets to the 022000 pattern, you get 577555 instead. That’s an A minor, root 6!

That’s the general idea behind bar chords, but if you’re still a little confused, hang in there, I explain things from a slightly different angle in the video below, and of course in FAR more detail and from multiple angles in Bar Chords Made Simple.

Click Here For Bar Chords Made Simple

0 Why Learn Bar Chords?

Many guitar players are intimidated by the prospect of learning bar chords, and I’ve found there are two common reasons for this. Either they’ve tried playing a bar chord before, and found it very difficult, or they just don’t know where to start. How do you get around the neck, so as to put a chord on the fifth fret that has no relation to anything in the open position?

Bar chords present a few challenges, to be sure, but instead of magnifying the challenges today I’m going talk about the benefits of learning bar chords. Once you get a really good reason in you mind of why you would want to learn how to play bar chords, then the challenges will automatically seem less to you.

One of the biggest reasons is versatility. Bar chords give you the ability to create chords in places on the fretboard that you can’t otherwise, and this gives you new sounds and tones to play with. Bar chords played alongside open chords sound absolutely great, so this really helps strengthen you as a rhythm player. A rhythm player who knows his bar chords is able to play the same thing as the rest of the band, and yet in a different position, so instead of just adding to the noise, you’re actually adding a unique part that can shine through a little.

Bar chords open up the rest of the guitar to the rhythm player. Even if you don’t want to get into soloing or anything like that (although especially if you do!) you can become a stronger rhythm player by mastering your bar chords. You won’t be locked into the bottom four frets anymore…

Another reason to learn bar chords is that some chords simply can’t be played open, and they can be played as bar chords. Ever try playing an E flat major chord? It is so much easier if you know how to play it as a bar chord. Sure, that’s an uncommon chord, but there are quite a few others out there in the same boat.

For more reasons why you can benefit by learning bar chords, checkout this article.