rhythm guitar lessons Article

Guitar Bar Chords - How To Easily Transform From Average To Perfect

When you start to learn how to play bar chords, you have normally played the for a while already and so have an idea of what results you want to expect from yourself.

If you are a decent player and find bar chords more difficult that you expected, it can be tempting to learn just enough to get along, but not really get the same enjoyment out of standard chords which sound much cleaner.

Bar chords can sound muffled or out of tune, just down to lack of practice of hand positioning. There is a technique which will enable you to perfect the clarity in each string.

Tip #1

Lay your first finger on 5th fret and strum all 6 strings. Sound pretty ugly? Let's try and sort that straight away.

Tip #2

If standard tuning is this :-

E A D G B E

Re-tune your as follows :-

E B E G# B E

If you strum this with all strings open, it will sound like E major. Try this again with your first finger across the 5th fret. We'll show

this in tab form as 5-5-5-5-5-5.

Tip #3

Use whichever strumming pattern that gets you going and alternate between the 5-5-5-5-5-5 and this 5-7-5-6-5-5. You will notice that the new shape is like a major 7 bar chord shape.

Alternating between the two shapes, besides sounding like the chords from a million and one songs, gets you to remember how important the backbone of the bar chord is, as each time you release your 2nd and 3rd finger from the next shape, any relaxation will be exposed for your ears to notice.

Keep practicing the alternation between these two shapes and your bar chords will improve significantly and you will find a natural resting position for your 1st finger making bar chords so much easier for the rest of your days.

The real benefit of this will be when you return to standard tuning and need to play minor chords, which with the help of these techniques will now sound in a different league. Try this and your enjoyment of playing bar chords will explode.