Hello my friends, it's Justin again
coming for the first solo video lesson

meaning that I'm by myself
not that it's about lead guitar.

And what this lesson's going to 
be about is barre chords.

A lot of people, when they first
start playing barre chords,

say they have a bit of difficulty trying
to get all the notes clear and clean.

So I'm going to try to explain to you
where the barre chords come from.

The basic kind of shapes like you might
have learned an F chord,

it's called an E shape barre chord.

But I'll give you a few tips on
making sure that you get

the fingering kind of good for that.

The first thing is, I've already mentioned
it before, it's an E shape.

So the very first barre chord shape
that most people learn

is based really by playing a
regular E chord,

which I'm hoping you know, 
you should know your E chord good

before you try a barre chord
with an E shape.

If you refinger that chord, 
i.e. change the fingers that

you use, but keep the dots the same.

So you end up using your second,
third and fourth fingers

and your first finger is free.

I'm going to go for a closeup
in a sec, I just have to figure

out how to do that in a sec.

Once that chord shape is down
if you move that shape up

and put your first finger down,
your first finger is replacing the nut.

The nut is the little plastic or bone
usually white thing down at

the end of the guitar neck.

So you can see very clearly that
we've got and E chord,

if we move up everything up one fret
and then put your first finger

on the first fret, your first
finger has replaced the nut.

And the reason it's an F chord
is because it's all the same notes

just everything has been moved higher
by one semi-tone.

So, now I'm just going to give 
you a closeup of that,

exactly this E to F movement.
And then we'll move it up to an

A or something and 
I'll give you some stuff.

So I'll get my fancy remote control
thing here, and see if I can

figure out how to get the camera
to do a closeup on my hand.

So I'll see you guys in a sec.

OK, that didn't seem too bad,
so here we are in a closeup.

So if we start here with our regular 
old faithful E chord.

So we've got first finger, 
first fret, third string.

Second finger, second fret, 
fifth string.

Third finger, underneath.

Remember of course you are trying
to get this finger up as close

to the fret as you can,
but you can't get it right

next door because the third finger
is kind of blocking the way a bit.

So that's your basic E chord.

Your first attempt at playing
a barre chord, you should try

move your second finger to where
your first finger was.

Your third finger moves to where
your second finger was.

Your little finger sneaks up there 
underneath.

So you've now got,
second finger, first fret, third string.

Third finger, on the fifth string second
fret. And little finger underneath on the

fourth string. So you can see
now that your first finger

is free to wave and do little
stupid dances and stuff. OK.

So that's your E chord.
To get to F you move all of those

notes up one fret, and the first finger
now goes down and covers

all of the strings. Now even that's
covering all of the strings because

your second, third, and fourth finger
covering strings three, four, and five.

You only really needed to cover
the thickest string and the

thinnest two strings.

But in order to do that you kind
of want to put your pressure

focus your pressure like it's here
in the middle of the barre.

That's the place that you kind
of focus your energy.

I know that sounds a bit funny,
hippy stuff.

But if you think about pressing down
in the middle of the finger,

it will make the two ends help press
down, kind of consistently.

Now the other thing with barre chords
that's really important:

the second, third and fourth fingers
are kind of standard.

Make sure that they are pressing down
and not trying to lay over like that.

Regular E, moving up to F.

Now when you put the barre down don't
try and press down flat down that way

with the first finger.

Actually what you're trying to do here
is you're trying to roll over

the part of your finger,
there's my hand.

The part of the finger that presses
down for the barre is here,

It's not the flat like this.
It's not that part there that presses

it's this kind of on the diagonal of
your finger, the edge.

So what you do is you put your
first finger down flat kind of

right on the barre itself.

So that would be behind the barre,
you can see the barre there now.

So this is like right on the barre.

And then you roll it slightly onto the
side, and then your fingers go down.

Now by doing that, as you probably know,
your first finger doesn't really

want to move a lot either way sideways.
I know you can move it a little bit,

but It doesn't tend to want to.

So if you're trying to think of 
your barre chord grip like this,

then when you're trying to, if you're
trying to turn your hand that way

on the guitar neck here, so this way.

You're putting the pressure sideways
with the first finger.

Think of the pressure as going sideways.
Not going straight down.

It will make it an awful lot easier to 
get your barre chord really solid.

So put it down on the fret
roll it over onto the side,

so to kind of like 45 degrees,
it's not the side side.

And then put your other fingers down.

Make sure of course you practice doing
picking your notes one at a time.

Making sure you get a nice clear chord.

Also make sure that your first finger
isn't hanging over the end too much.

I see some people trying to do their barre
chords with way too much

of the first finger flopping over.

So, keep it down so that basically the
idea would be if you moved it down

to the fifth string root barre chord,
which we're not going to talk about yet,

but if you did, the first finger, the tip
of it would be muting the sixth string.

But we want it, you know,
half a centimeter over the end,

you know that 's like a quarter
of an inch or something like that

for you Americans who don't have
the metric system going on yet.

OK, so, the main thing with the barre
chord is making sure you put it flat,

roll it over onto the side, 
keep the pressure focused in

the middle of your first finger,
and make sure the rest of your fingers

is square and not laid over like that.

Make sure that they kind
of square up like that.

It was too long, please join me

for Part two.